FATHER LACOMBE 

THE BLACK-ROBE VOYAGEUR 




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FATHER LACOMBE 



The Black-Robe Voyageur 



KATHERINE HUGHES 



ILLUSTRATED 




NEW YORK 
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 

1911 






Copyright, 1911, by 

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 

Nbw York 

All Rights Eeserved 

PabliBhed October, 1911 



©CI,A303037 



TO 

THE FAITH AND OBIT 

or THE UNWRITTEN HEROES 

IN THE OLD GUARD OF OBLATBS 

IN WESTERN CANADA 



' Send me men girt for the combat. 

Men who are grit to the core. . . . 
Send me the best of your breeding. 

Lend me your chosen ones; 
Them will I take to my bosom, 

Them will I call my sons. . . , 
And I will not be won by weaklings. 

Subtile, suave and mild. 
But by men with the hearts of Vikings, 

And the simple faith of a child." 

Service. 



PREFACE 

Near the Lake of the Woods at sunrise one morn- 
ing in 1882 I saw a priest standing on a flat rock, his 
crucifix in his right hand and his broad hat in the 
other, silhouetted against the rising sun, which made 
a golden halo about him, talking to a group of In- 
dians — ^men, women and pappooses — ^who were listen- 
ing with reverent attention. It was a scene never 
to be forgotten, and the noble and saintly countenance 
of the priest brought it to me that this must be Father 
Lacombe of whom I had heard so much; and it was. 

My acquaintance with him, begun that morning, 
has been full of charm to me, and my only regret is 
that in these later years the pleasure of meeting him 
has come at lengthening intervals. His hfe, devoted 
and self-sacrificing, has been like peaceful moonlight 
— commonplace to some, but to others full of quiet 
splendour, serenity, mystery and of much more for 
which there are no words. 

We who know him love him because of his goodness 
and we feel that he is great; but we may not say he 
is great because of this or that. His Hfe has been 
hidden from the world in far-away Indian encamp- 
ments and it is there we must look for accounts of his 
good works and great deeds. 

The noble and elevating example of devotion and 



vm PREFACE 

self-sacrifice that has been given us by Father La- 
combe in his more than sixty years of work among the 
Indians of Western Canada should not be lost, for 
he would be stony-hearted indeed who would not be 
softened and humanized by such an example, which 
must bring even to the irreligious a feeling of pro- 
found respect for the faith which inspired and sus- 
tained this good man. 

It is fortunate, therefore, that Miss Hughes who 
is so well fitted in every way and especially by her 
intimate knowledge of the covmtry in which Father 
Lacombe has laboured so long and with the conditions 
surrounding him, should have undertaken a record 
of his life, with a reverent love of her subject to guide 
her pen; and I regard it as a very great honour that 
she has asked me to write a Preface for her book. 

W. C. Van Horne, 
Montreal, 21st April, 1910. 



FOREWORD 

Father Lacombe's peculiarly vivid intellect — 
which even yet seizes upon every detail in events 
and people that touch on his life — ^liolds the Past 
as in a niirror. To avail myself of this knowledge 
in securing quite accurate pictures of early West- 
ern periods and incidents I have for some years 
submitted this venerable man month after month 
to what he laughingly termed " inquisitions." 

Some others of the few real Old-Timers remain- 
ing have likewise submitted to my " inquisitions," 
and generously contributed to my knowledge of 
details. Their names occur in the narrative; I 
desire to thank them here for their valuable 
assistance. 

I would also acknowledge my indebtedness to 
my friends — Bishop Legal, who opened to me the 
Archives of St. Albert and his letters from Father 
Lacombe, the Hon. Alexander Rutherford, who 
gave me access to his library of rare Canadiana, and 
others. 

K. H. 



CONTENTS 



PART ONE 

I 

IN OLD QUEBEC 

1839-1849 

PAGE 

Chasse-Galerie — Saint-Sulpice — The Home Feast of the 
New Year — Childhood — Remote Ancestor an Ojibway 
Chief — L'Assumption College — Bishop's Palace, Mon- 
treal — Rev. Georges Belcourt — Call of Western Mis- 
sions — Ordination 3 

II 

THE WEST BECKONS 

1849 

Dramatic Scene in Palace Chapel — Departure from Lachine 
— Bishop Loras and Dubuque — A Missouri Flat-boat — 
One Month at St. Paul — Father Ravoux — A Coffin-bed 
— By Carts to Pembina — Saulteux Indians Pillage 
Travellers 14 

III 

HIS WANDERJAHR AT PEMBINA 
1849-1850 

Bishop Provencher and Red River — Summer on the Plains 
with Metis — The Wild Glory of the Buffalo Hunt — The 
Manna of the Prairies — Triumphal Procession of the 
Primitive Man 22 



xii CONTENTS 

IV 

ON TO THE SASKATCHEWAN 

1850-1852 

PAGE 

Returns to Montreal — Meets Bishop Tache — Volunteers for 
Western Missions — The Red River in Flood — Replaces 
Father Thibault at Fort Edmonton — Voyage up Sas- 
katchewan in York Boats — Hardships of "Tracking 
Crew" — Chief Factor John Rowand — Welcome to Old 
Fort Edmonton .. ,., . . ,., . ., ,., ,., ,.. . 341 



.■V! 
FORT EDMONTON IN ROWAND'S DAY 

1852-1853 

Headquarters of Hudson's Bay Company in Far West — 
Primitive Stronghold — Rowand's Folly — Lac la Biche — 
Studies Cree with Governor Simpson's Piper — The 
Bully Paulet Paul — Defies His Friend Rowand, the 
Napoleon of the Saskatchewan — The Company's As- 
sistance to Pioneer Missionaries ,., i., ,.i ,., i.i ,., . 46 



VE 

EXPLORING a: NEW FIELD 

1853-1857 

Blackfeet Trading at Fort Edmonton — ^When Rum was Ex- 
changed for Peltry — Lac Ste. Anne — Tache's First 
Pastoral Visit — Father Lacombe Journeys to Peace 
River, 500 Miles Distant — Novitiate — Trip to Jasper 
House — Caught by Forest Fire — Into the Country of 
Warlike Blackfeet — Three Mangled Bodies ... 59 



CONTENTS xiii 

VII 
PALLISER AND SOUTHESK 

1857-1861 

PAGE 

First Mission to the Blackfeet — Distress in Epidemic — Col- 
ony at Lake Grows — Palliser Expedition — Dr. Hector 
and Invalid Frain — The fameux Alexis and Dog-train 
— Lord Southesk's Tribute to Father Lacombe — An Un- 
expected Visit and Gladness in the Forest — Blackfeet 
want Father Lacombe as their Praying-Man ... 70 



VIII 
AN ORGANIZING GENIUS AT PLAY 

1861-1862 

Tache Selects Site of St. Albert — Father Lacombe Estab- 
lishes Colony — The Golden Age — Builds First Bridge 
West of Red River — Initiates Transport of Freight 
Across Prairies in Red River Carts — Establishes First 
School West of Red River — Starvation on Plains — 
Plenty in Colony — Father Lacombe Builds a Grist- 
mill 82 



IX 
VISITS FROM THE OUTSIDE WORLD 

1862-1865 

Governor Dallas Visits St. Albert — Angered at Bridge — 
Lord Milton and Cheadle Arrive — Out to the Plains — 
Encounter with Medicine-Man, White Eagle — Murder 
of Sarcee by Little Pine- — War-Party of Blackfeet 
Threaten Fort Edmonton — Dr. Rae Visits Father La- 
combe — Gaspard Lacombe — American Miners Appear 
on Saskatchewan — Visit of Father Vanderburghe . . 92 



xiv CONTENTS 

X 

A CRUSADER OF THE PLAINS 

1865 

PAGE 

Father Lacombe Assigned to Free-Lance Mission on Plains 
— Journeys by Dog-Train with Alexis — Head-Chief 
Sweet-Grass — Establishment of St. Paul des Cris — A 
New Moses in a Camp of Israel — Hunting Buffalo, 
and Souls 107 

XI 

BATTLE BETWEEN BLACKFEET AND CREES 
1865 

Midnight Attack of Crees on Band of Chief Natous — Father 
Lacombe in Tent of Natous — Amid Clamour of Battle 
He Calls on Crees to Withdraw-^Crowfoot to the Res- 
cue — Father Lacombe Advances Alone Upon Firing- 
Line — Struck by Bullet — Richard Hardisty's Welcome 
to Rocky Mountain House 116 

XII 
COURSING THE WIDE PLAINS 

1865-1867 

Christmas at Fort Edmonton — The Mess-Room of the 
Gentlemen Adventurers — Peace to Men of Good- Will — 
Jimmy-from-Cork — Gibbons and Livingstone, Miners — 
Father Lacombe Rescues Abandoned Squaw — Hard 
Trip to Fort Carlton — Bishop Grandin 124 

XIII 
A HUNTING GROUND FOR SOULS 

1867-1868 

On to St. Boniface — The Company Brings in Its First Bri- 
gade of Carts — Sarcee Maiden Captive — -The House- 
Tent — Off to the Plains — Band of Starving Indians . 136 



CONTENTS XV 

XIV 

SOWING IN TEARS 

1868 

PAGE 

Starving on the Winter Plains — Bouillon of Moccasins and 
Sinews — Carcass of Dying Buffalo — Camp of Chief 
Sweet-Grass — The Innocent Prodigals Welcomed to the 
Camp-Fires — Midnight-Mass on the Plains — Tribute 
of Sweet-Grass to the Pontiff 146 

XV 

IN PARTIBUS INFIDELIUM 

1868-1869 

Wins Sarcees by Coup d'Etat — On the Plains with Crees — 
Prevents Blackfoot Attack — Welcomes Bishop Grandin 
— Quaint Notes of Episcopal Surroundings in partibus 
infidelium — A Successful Surgical Operation . . .157 

XVI 

ACROSS THE BORDER 

186&-1870 

Possibilities of Southern Transportation — Father Lacombe 
Departs for St. Louis — Fort Benton — Hunting Buffalo 
from Deck of Flat-boat — A Hurried Visit to Canada — 
Return West With Sister — A Hard Winter on the 
Plains — Blackfeet March on Fort Edmonton . . .168 



XVII 
RAVAGES OF SMALLPOX 

1870 

Fort Edmonton in State of Defence — Narrow Escape of 
Father Lacombe — Journey to Fort Dunvegan on the 
Peace — Ravages of Smallpox — Battles with the Disease 
on the Plains — A Year of Sad Memories . . . .178 



xvi CONTENTS 

XVIII 

"I will tell you when my time has come!" 

1870-1871 

PAOB 

Many Pagans Converted — Head-Chief Sweet-Grass and His 
Past — Winter at Rocky Mountain House — Compiles 
Two Books in Cree — Author of Great Lone Land — 
Another Summer on the Plains — The Marriage of Wil- 
liam — Quaint Ante-nuptial Declaration . . ,., . ,., 187i 



XIX 
FRESH MARCHING ORDERS 

1871-1872 

With the Blackfeet — A New Mission Along the Bow — In- 
vents an Illustrated Catechism — The Beginning of the 
End — Rumours of a Transcontinental Railway — Neces- 
sity of Indian Schools — Father Lacombe Receives Fresh 
Marching-Orders — Finds Winnipeg Rising Out of Fort 
Garry — A New Life Beckons ... ,., ,., ,. ,., ,., ,., 201 



PART TWO 

I 
THE PLAINSMAN ABROAD 

1872-1873 

Archbishop Tascherau — Father Lacombe Learns the Hard 
Metier of a Beggar — Government Grant to Cree Dic- 
tionary — Sails for Europe — Ploughing London — Arch- 
bishop Manning — Experiences in Paris — Louis Veuillot 
— Tours France and Germany — Homesick for the 
Plains 213 



CONTENTS xvii 

II 

OTTAWA POLITICS AND RED RIVER 
COLONIZING 

1873-1876 

PAGE 

Archbishop Tache and Sir John Macdonald — The Trouble- 
some Amnesty — Sir Aime Dorion Appeals to Father 
Lacombe — St. Mary's, Winnipeg — Years of Coloniza- 
tion — Ungrateful Nature of the Work — James J. Hill 
— Donald Smith — W. F. Luxton — Execution of the 
Metis Angus . . . 227 

III 

THE PLAINS INDIANS ARE CORALLED 

1876-1880 

Plains Indians are Brought Into Treaty Relations — North- 
West Mounted Police — Buffalo Disappear — Famine 
Stalks over Plains — Father Lacombe Journeys to Rome 
— Echo of the Fifties — The Canadian Pacific Ap- 
proaches the West — Father Lacombe Appointed Chap- 
lain to Construction Camps 2411 

IV 
CHAPLAIN ON FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL; 

1880-1882 

A Tourney with Disorder — Deplorable Conditions of Camps 
— Visit of Marquis of Lome — Father Lacombe Longs 
for Indian Missions — Released . ,., ,., ,., .: ,., ,. 251 



V 
THE VANISHING WILDERNESS 

1882-1883 

Twelve Hundred Miles in a Buckboard — Pioneers in Prairie- 
Schooners and Red River Carts — Old Fort Edmonton 



i CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Slipped Into the Past — Returning to Wilderness, Finds 
It a Frontier — Mounted Police Posts — Letter from His 
Mother 261 



VI 

CANADIAN PACIFIC MARKS EPOCH 

1883 

The Canadian Pacific Invades the Far West — Father Lacombe 
Quiets Blackfeet — The Frontier Town of Calgary — 
First Train to the Bow — Luncheon in the President's 
Car — Father Lacombe President of the C. P. R. for 
One Hour — Ex-ofScio Arbiter in Horse-thefts — The 
New Order 272 



VII 
FOUNDATION OF INDIAN SCHOOLS 

1883-1884 

A Picturesque Western Invasion- — Growth of Calgary — Plan 
of Indian Industrial Schools — Sir John's Views — 
"Learning and Piety Are not All-sufBcient" — Father 
Lacombe Establishes Dunbow School — Remarkable 
Progress in His Mission Field ...,.,... 282 



VIII 

METIS REBELLION OF 1885 

1885 

Misunderstandings Between Government and Western Na- 
tives — A Government's Fatuity- — Half-breeds' Impa- 
tience — Riel Brought Back — "To Arms ! — Father La- 
combe Aids in Quieting Blackfeet — Visit to Northern 
Crees — The Watchword, "Lacombe" 292 



CONTENTS xix 

IX 
TOURS THE EAST WITH CROWFOOT 

1885-1888 

PAGE 

Pleads for Release of Indian Warriors — Tours East with 
Blackfoot Chiefs, as Guests of Government — Indians 
Impressed with Military Force — Crowfoot's Chivalry — 
Trip to Vancouver — Murder of Archbishop Seghers — 
Campaign of Begging in East — Opposition to Metis 
Colony .............. ... ,. . 308 



X 

A NEW WEST EMERGES 

1882-1892 

The "chateau" at Lethbridge — First Council of Western 
Catholic Clergy — Visit of Lord Stanley — Courtesy of 
Van Home — Death of Crowfoot — Trip to Sechelt — 
Meets the Aberdeens — Demoralization of Metis — Hos- 
pital for Indians . 319 



XI 

MANITOBA SCHOOL QUESTION LOOMS UP 

1892-1894 

Bishops from the West — Indian Passion Play — Burning His 
Ships — Father Lacombe as Lieutenant of Archbishop 
Tache^ — Brief Respite in Hermitage — The Joys of the 
Open Road 333 

XII 
KEEPING STEP WITH PROGRESS 

1894-1896 

School Question Lingers — Father Lacombe Secures Co- 
operations of Hierarchy — Tour with Rev. Father Soul- 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

lier — Death of Archbishop Tache — Assigned to Edmon- 
ton — Plans a New Work to Aid Metis — Secures Bridge 
Over Saskatchewan for City of Edmonton ,„ ,., ^ i.- 345 



XIII 

SCHOOL QUESTION OVERTHROWS 
GOVERNMENT 

1894-1896 

Thrust Into Political Arena — Letter to Wilfrid Laurier — In- 
tense Interest in Campaign Which Rouses Dominion — 
Remedial Bill Rejected — General Elections — Crushing 
Defeat of Government . . . i., ,.. .. ,., ,. .. 359 



XIV 
OPENING UP OF NORTH COUNTRY 

1896-1899 

Returns to South — Bishop Legal — Illness and Financial 
Cares — Gift from Queen Victoria — -Abbe de Bie — Klon- 
dyke Rush Opens Up North — Treaty Commissioners 
for North Appointed — Father Lacombe Adviser — 
Unique Celebration of Jubilee in Forest . . ,., ... . 372 



XV 

'D2TUR-0MNIBUS 
1899-1900 

Historical Fort Chipewyan — Disconsolate Gold-seekers 
Homeward Bound — Fort McMurray — Murder of 
Witigo — Golden Jubilee at St. Albert — Bishop Gran- 
din's Toast — Why Father Lacombe Was Never Made 
a Bishop — To Europe in Interest of Ruthenians . . 387 



CONTENTS xxi 

XVI 

AT THE AUSTRIAN COURT 
1900-1902 

PAGE 

Audience with Emperor Francis Joseph — The Oblate's Only 
Decoration — Renews Friendships in London — Poverty 
of Diocese — A Fresh Campaign of Begging in the East 402 

XVII 
RETIREMENT TO HERMITAGE 

1902-1904. 

Death of Bishop Grandin — A Financial Success — One of the 
Old Guard — Lord Mountstephen's Generosity — Retires 
to Hermitage — Disaster at Frank — To the East with 
Hands Outstretched Again 417 

XVIII 
A HERMIT WHO WOULD NOT STAY AT HOME 

1904-19O8 

Journey to Rome and the Holy Land — "Le vieux Papa" as- 
tonishes Pilgrims — Rumoured Passing to Greek Rite — 
Meeting of Pius X and Father Lacombe — "M'sieu 
I'Empereur" — Loss of Noted Cross — Destruction of Col- 
ony School — New Plan for Memoirs 429 

XIX 

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 

1 908-1 9— 

Abandonment of Metis Colony — Home for Destitute — In- 
dian School System — First Catholic Congress in New 
World — Political Views of Father Lacombe — Attends 
First Plenary Council — Diamond Jubilee — Gaspard La- 
combe — Meets Strathcona Again — Opening of Lacombe 
Home 442 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Father Lacombe Frontispiece ^ 

FACING FAUE 

Winnipeg in 1870 20 1/ 

First Cathedral of St. Paul 20 (^ 

Plan of Fort Edmonton in the Sixties 48^" 

Making a Blackf oot brave the ordeal 98 i^ 

Gold washing by miners on Saskatchewan . . . . 128 1/" 

Fort Edmonton, 1877 180 1^ 

Map showing the field of Father Lacombe's activities . 193 "^ 

Father Lacombe among the Indians at Rat Portage . 218"^ 

An Indian Sun Dance, 1877 240 v/ 

Old Fort Whoop-up, 1874. Near Lethbridge, Alta . 260 l^ 
"... Even here were evidences of the white man's in- 
vasion " 260 / 

Interior of Fort Pitt, just before the rebellion of 

1885 294 v/ 

Group inside Fort Edmonton in the Eighties . . . 320 ^ 

The blending of the old and new at Edmonton . . . 350^ 

Klondykers at Edmonton en route to the Yukon . . 376 1/ 

The site of the Hermitage at Pincher Creek . . . 406 ^ 

Lord Strathcona and Father Lacombe 452 , 

Father Lacombe 460 ^ A, 



PART I 



FATHER LACOMBE 

THE ENTRANCE 

"All the world's a stage. . . . 
And one man in his time plays many parts, 
His Acts being seven Ages." 

The first half of the nineteenth century was draw- 
ing to a close: Canada was in the throes of national 
birth. Montreal — having looked on at its Parlia- 
ment Buildings destroyed by fire, and authority's 
symbol, the Mace, tossed about on the shoulders of a 
mob — lay in the grim shadow of a cholera epidemic. 

Meanwhile — out over the beckoning trails of the 
green West a stripling of twenty was making his way 
into the wonderland of the voyageurs — ^the mysteri- 
ous and httle-known Pays d'en Haut. He brought 
with him little more than the staff and scrip of the 
medieval pilgrim — this Monias, but he was of the type 
that trader and dusky trapper ahke welcomed. 

They found him at first moulded in the courtHness 
and restraint of manner characteristic of the men who 
tutored him in the quiet old Palace at Montreal, but 
there soon sprang up in him what the eagle-eyes of 
the boy had always denoted — a fearlessness, a force 
and a primitive dignity that more than matched the 
best material of the strong new country before him. 
1 



2 FATHER LACOMBE 1839 

It is sixty years since then — at this time of writing 
—and through all that formative period of the West 
the figure of this stripling — roimding into maturity, 
or bending to a venerable old age — stands silhouetted, 
in imperious lines or again with tender charm, against 
the pages of western history. 

At the outset he appears as a knight-errant on 
the western Plains — a picturesque figure with the 
Red Cross of his flag floating above him, here, there 
and everywhere along the prairies between the Red 
River and the Mountains of the Setting Sun . . • 
now sharing the tepees of the nomad tribes; now 
making a stand at some mission-place — with axe and 
plough guiding the Metis and Indian to the ways of 
the white man . . . leading them out from the 
blanket and tepee to the school and homestead. 

As time passes, on some of his endless journeyings 
to and fro across the Continent he appears on the 
plains again — a peaceful Clovis leading his country- 
men from a land outgrown to new fields of promise. 
And when a young civilization of many needs, spirit- 
ual and material, emerges from the prairies — ^the 
knight -errant of Western priesthood is found again 
and again measuring the gray corridors of Canada's 
Parliament Buildings or suppliant for others in the 
cold magnificence of European courts. 

Then fell the evening of Life, The vigorous form 
grew bent and the erstwhile shoulders narrowed. 
. . . Now there remains in his Hermitage among 



1839 FATHER LACOMBE 3 

the foothills an old Christian medicine-man with only 
the warmth and hght of his wonderful eyes undimmed 
by Time: relit perhaps with the radiance of the light 
that shines across the Great Divide. 



The character of the race from which Albert La- 
combe sprang is most subtly revealed in Quebec's old 
legend of the Chasse-Galerie. 

It is an exquisite mosaic of racial and domestic 
feeling, instinct with the warmth and daring and in- 
souciance of the Canadien habitant — ^misty with the 
pathos of tlie Canadien errant. 

It grew up imperceptibly in the days of the Old 
Regime, when the reckless voyageurs pushed farther 
and farther west in the wake of Le Verandrye's canoe, 
and the hearts of their womenfolk followed after. 

It mirrored the dare-devil hearts of the coureurs de 
hois drawn home on New Year's Eve from far-off 
Athabasca and Saskatchewan to the glowing hearths 
of their kinsfolk on the banks of the St. Lawrence. 

On that one night their souls sickened of the stern, 
coarse life in far-off trading posts, of stag dances in 
the Bachelors' Hall and the ungraceful shuffle of 
blanketed squaws. Their ghostly canoes — so the 
legend runs — rode down the winter storm with spirit- 
cargoes. 

Their wraiths, invading the cheery homes of Que- 
bec, embraced the old people and stole kisses from the 



4 FATHER LACOMBE 1839 

girls in the dances — then, mon Dieu, were whisked 
up again into the canoes; and palHd with regi'ets 
borne back to the wilderness. 

In this legend of the Chasse Galerie there is em- 
bodied the spiritual essence of French-Canada and its 
people — ^the tinge of mysticism that hints of the poet- 
heai-t, the fine daring, the warm sympathies, the quick 
forgetfulness, the love of home, the joy of life. And 
this is the land and these the people that produced 
Father Lacombe. 

Whether or not the Chasse Galerie came home for 
the fireside feast in 1839, the chimes in the gray tower 
of Saint Sulpice rang out a heartening welcome to 
the New Year. Twenty miles across the snow the 
gay carillon was answered with peals from the 
churches of Montreal; and in the home of Albert 
Lacombe, worthy habitant of Saint Sulpice, there 
was a glad confusion. 

The household was making ready for the ancient 
ceremony of paternal blessing that ushers in the New 
Year in a French-Canadian home. The father, con- 
sciously fine in his best suit of homespun and his finest 
linen woven by the deft hands of his goodwife, seated 
himself in the old fauteuil that had belonged to his 
father. 

His wife — carrying herself with loving pride 
"like the queen of the home, doing its hon- 
ours," her son recalls — stood near him, watching ten- 
derly the mobile trusting faces of their seven little 



1839 FATHER LACOMBE 6 

ones as they knelt about their father's knees, resting 
their baby hands on his strong Hmbs. 

Albert the eldest voiced prettilj'-, as his mother 
had taught him, their New Year's wishes for their 
father, closing with a request for a blessing upon 
themselves. Then suddenly, prompted by his own 
exceedingly warm heart, he broke through the usual 
forms of ceremony to cry to his mother: 

"And, Maman, you know how we love you!" 

In the raftered kitchen, whose brown wooden walls 
and primitive furnishings were mellowed by the early 
morning firelight this vivid tableau of habitant life 
defined the starting-place of history in the life of 
Father Lacombe, who Avas born in this "gentille pa- 
roisse" of St. Sulpice on February 28, 1827. 

Albert Lacombe was a quietly genial, industrious 
man neither rich nor poor, attached to his home and 
farmwork, with a desire to see his sons follow in his 
own footsteps. He and his wife had never received 
any adequate education as books go, but they were 
versed in all the arts that made up the round of their 
simple pleasant life in the leisurel}^ parish. 

Albert, pere, and Albert, jils, each spring went back 
into a cabin in the maple woods and made sugar and 
syrup to supply the household for the entire year. 
The father enjoyed his pipe, his jokes and tricks — ■ 
for he was full of a quaint humour — his old camarades 
and his occasional coup of boisson blanc — the mint- 
julep of the north. But he was not a hunter: he did 



6 FATHER LACOMBE 1839 

not even keep a gun in his house, and during the 
Papineau Rising of 1837 he remained unexcited, 
placidly loyal. 

Like the majority of the Quebec habitants he drew 
an exceeding delight from his pipe and home-grown 
tobacco ; yet each year before midnight of Mardi Gras, 
the eve of Lent, he would place his pipe with all the 
solemnity of a rite upon the mantel, "where it re- 
mained sleeping," says his son, "without tobacco, 
smoke or fire until the feast of Easter. The pipe, 
too, kept the fast." 

Madame Agathe Lacombe, like her husband, was 
of a cheerful domestic nature, pious, thrifty and in- 
dustrious. She was a brunette of trim, strong phy- 
sique and very active. Her son, however, resembled 
his father in face and form rather than her. 

Albert when not at school was kept closely at work 
on the farm, and his boyish spirit chafed at the 
monotonous round. Picking stones on new land, 
feeding the pigs, driving the plough ! This, when the 
boy's heart in him was burning to leave the farm, to 
go to college — ^to be a great man, a priest maybe like 
the old cure J Monsieur de Viau; or perhaps to leave 
books altogether and hke his grand-uncle, Joseph La- 
combe, to go far into the Pays d'en Haut with the 
fur-company and be the most daring voyageur of 
them all. Either career seemed blissful to the boy, 
for these two men were the heroes of his childhood. 

The kindly old cure grew attached to the boy. 
"Mon petit sauvage" (my little Indian), he used to 



1840 FATHER LACOMBE Tl 

call him — not only because his skin and eyes were 
flashing dark, but because his mother, Agathe Du- 
hamel dite Sans-Facon, was the descendant of that 
Duhamel maiden carried into captivity over a hun- 
dred years earlier by an Ojibway chief. The French 
girl bore him two sons before her voyageur uncle 
stole her and the boys from a camp at Sault Ste. 
Marie, and restored her to the Duhamels of Saint 
Sulpice. One of these boys was an ancestor of 
Madame Lacombe. 

One Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1840 Al- 
bert Lacombe with his wife and cliildren sat sunning 
themselves by the doorway of their home, when the 
cure drove up to them in an old vehicle drawn by 
a fat old horse. He seated himself for a short inti- 
mate chat as a father might with his son. 

He enquired about the crops, the farmwork, all 
the good habitant's plans; then turning suddenly to- 
ward the boy Albert he said: 

"My httle Indian, what are you going to do?" 

The cliild's brain throbbed in confusion. He 
knew; but how could he tell Monsieur le cure? He 
looked desperately up to his father. 

"Monsieur le cure" the father said, "Albert would 
go to the big college; but I have no means to send 
him. And besides I need him here to help me." 

"My lad," said the old cure directing all his atten- 
tion to the boy, "do you want very much to go to 
college?" 

Albert, always emotional, could make no reply in 



8 FATHER LACOMBE 184.7. 

Tv^ords ; but his hand grasped the extended hand of the 
priest and the tears that shone in the dark eyes were 
eloquent. 

"Eh, bien," said the cure turning to the father. 
"You will send him to the college, and I will pay 
his way. Who knows? . . . Some day our httle 
Indian may be a priest and work for the Indians!" 

In this way, thanks to M. Viau, another bright 
young mind was added to the regiment of talented 
boys without means who were then and still are being 
provided for in Quebec colleges by the parish priests 
or by religious communities. 

Robust, active and ambitious as a student at L'As- 
somption College, the little Indian worked hard, 
played hard, and stood well in his classes. 

The rector of the college, made aware of Albert's 
desire for the priesthood, placed him at the conclusion 
of his classics in charge of a junior class in the col- 
lege, investing him at the same time with the cas- 
sock as a mark of his purpose. 

In 1847 he was called to the bishop's Palace in 
Montreal to continue his theological studies there. 
Bishop Bourget assigned to him the duties of under- 
secretary as assistant to Canon Pare, while his theo- 
logical course was pursued under the direction of 
Monsignor Prince, the coadjutor bishop. 

These studies were shared by Edouard Fabre (aft- 
erward Archbishop of Montreal) . A hfelong friend- 
ship sprang up between the young men. They dis- 
covered that they had the same birthday; and each 



1848 FATHER LACOMBE 9 

year when Madame Fabre — a grande dame of the old 
school — celebrated her son's birthday she made it clear 
that the fete was equally Albert's and her son's. 

Life at the Palace was pleasant, yet the voyageur 
spirit in Albert Lacombe regarded it only as a means 
to an end. Sixty years later he said : 

"There at the house of the Bishop, my good pro- 
tector, my dear friend, I was very happy. They were 
good to me — le petit sauvage, they called me. The 
Canons loved me and were kind; I cannot tell you 
how kind. I had not too much work to fatigue me. 
I was well. . . . The cures, the parish priests 
from many parts of the country, would come there — 
Oh! hundreds of them came there, one or two at a 
time and camped there for three or four nights. 

"Thej'- were fine pleasant men — I liked to meet 
them. They lived in comfortable houses, they were 
liked by their people. They did good work. . . . 
But I would look at them and say to myself, 'No, 
that is not for me. I would not live quiet like that 
for all the world. I must go out and work — I must 
save my soul in my own way.' " 

In the winter of 1848 Father George Belcourt, 
a missionary from the far Pembina district, sought 
hospitahty from the venerable bishop and alms for 
his missions from the Catholics of Quebec. He was 
a powerful, big man with a rugged face and great 
force of personahty. No country cure with delicious 
morsels of talk about this or that quaint parishioner; 
with preferences for this viand or that — ^but a man 



10 FATHER LACOMBE 1848 

whose tales were of the wild rush of the buffalo hunt, 
of the wily Saulteaux and Metis or murderous Sioux 
to whom he ministered; of the splendid struggle for 
human souls in a primitive land. 

Albert Lacombe hung on the stranger's words, in 
the community hall, at table, everywhere he went : and 
when one Sunday night Father Belcourt preached in 
the old cathedral of St. Jacques, at least one young 
man in the Sanctuary listened enraptured to the tales 
he told and the rousing appeal he made for help. 

"Sunday night, when the cathedral was filled," he 
has written in his letters, "the missionary went up 
into the pulpit and painted in an eloquent way the 
life and work of his missions. ... I was struck 
to the heart. An interior voice called to me — 'Quern, 
mittem? (Whom shall I send?) and I said in re- 
ply, 'Ecce ego, mitte me' (Behold, I am here; send 
me)." 

The following morning he opened his mind to the 
bishop. And Age counselled Youth, testing its 
metal. 

"Wait and reflect; and above all pray that you may 
come to know God's will in the matter. Is that the 
work for which the Creator has destined you?" 

The young man's heart thumped in acclaim of this 
as his destiny, but perceiving the bishop's tender 
thought for himself he bided his time as patiently as 
he might. His early patron — ^the venerable Abbe 
Viau — ^who was now an invalid in a hospice nearby, 
counselled delay. Canon Pare and Canon Mercier 



1848 FATHER LACOMBE 11 

to whom he owed so much instruction, advised him to 
give up the idea. 

"You are happy with us; you are too young to go 
so far. Stay," they said. The young man could not 
argue against such affectionate opposition as this. 
He went his way in silence, with his mind unchanged. 

"I knew I wanted to be a priest, but failing this 
mission-hfe, if I had to be a cure, I would have de- 
cided to rettu-n to the world. I wanted to make every 
sacrifice, or none. That was my nature," he has said. 

As spring came again the candidate's restless de- 
sire for the missions became more than ever apparent. 
The bishop sent for him and after questioning him 
closely to ascertain the genuineness of his vocation, 
told him to prepare for ordination: he might leave 
for the West the following summer. Albert was ex- 
ultant, although he went about his preparation with 
a tinge of sadness. 

On June 13th in St. Hyacinthe on the occasion of 
the annual retreat at the old college, he was raised to 
the priesthood. Hundreds witnessed the ceremony, 
and at the imposition of hands sixty priests in turn 
approached the young Levite to place a hand on his 
handsome dark head and salute him as brother. 

Father Lacombe returned joyfully to Montreal, 
only to have his joy dashed at the very threshold. 
. . . The servant who admitted him announced 
that the Abbe Viau had died suddenly that forenoon. 

The young priest could not believe the news in his 
first grief; only the evening before he had talked 



12 FATHER LACOMBE 1849 

long with his venerable patron, who seemed in the 
best of spirits and kissing his little Indian paternally, 
blessed him in leave-taking, with these words : 

"Mon cher Albert, I shall pray to-morrow that you 
will always be a good and holy priest." 

And now the Abbe Viau was dead. At the very 
hour his protege's ordination had taken place the old 
priest had given up his soul to his Master. "Whilst 
I wept beside his inanimate body," Father Lacombe 
wrote years later, "he seemed to say to me: 'Cur sum 
consummavi ... (I have finished the course 
. . .). Take my place as priest, for I have helped 
to make you what you are to-day.' " 

The plague of cholera now fell with blighting force 
on Montreal. The entire energies of the Bishop's 
household were directed to combatting the dread dis- 
ease. Canon Mercier, a man of much charm and in- 
tellect warmly loved by Father Lacombe, was weak- 
ened by his untiring ministry and succumbed to the 
plague. 

It was not until seven weeks after his ordination 
that Father Lacombe could leave for the West. His 
departure, marked by a most striking scene, was de- 
scribed at length in the Melanges Religieux, a church 
paper pubhshed in Montreal at that period. From 
this and other sources an account of this scene has 
been compiled. 

Its significance — ^like that of the Mass that 
prefaced the voyages of Colmnbus and Cartier and 
Champlain, or the prayers of the departing Pilgrim 



1849 FATHER LACOMBE 13 

Fathers — is that great deeds of venture and self-sac- 
rifice have alwaj's been undertaken by the beHeving 
heart, the man to Avhom a supernatural world is a 
reality. The mocker criticises from the comfortable 
depths of an armchair at liis Club. 



II 

It was past sunset on the evening of July 31, 1849. 
In gray old Montreal, whose early history is in- 
woven with churclimen and church influences, in the 
chapel of the Bishop's Palace there was enacted that 
evening a religious drama which fits in well with the 
story of a metropolis founded by the knightly de 
Maisonneuve. 

A young man — dark, vivid, strongly-built and 
black-gowned — stood on the steps before the altar, 
his hands almost clenched in an effort to hide the 
emotion that flooded him — his head upraised as in 
mental distress shutting out from his vision a long 
row of ecclesiastics, while one by one the venerable 
Bishop, the Canons and Abbes approached him and 
bent to kiss his feet. 

He knew this was only the old custom taken from 
the Seminary of Foreign Missions at Paris, and sug- 
gested by the Biblical verse : 

"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him 
that bringeth good tidings and that preacheth peace. . . ." 

He knew this, but his whole soul was in protest 

against it now. Once he had thought the custom 

strangely poetic and symbolic — but now, submitted 

to it himself? . . . The priest's sturdy, clear- 

14 



1849 FATHER LACOMBE 16 

eyed young manhood rebelled against such tribute 
from men he knew to be stronger, holier, more 
worldly-wise and more intellectual than himself. But 
as they came — and came, bending silently to his feet, 
tlie young man was seized on a moment with the awe 
of a new, almost terrible knowledge. . . . 

Hah! It was not then himself, Albert Lacombe, 
the pet of the Bishop's House, the newly-ordained, 
whom they saluted thus : it was instead the fulfilment 
in him of the ages-old command that the Peace and 
Good Will of the Christ should be carried by Chris- 
tians to the bourne of the visible world! He, "le 
petit sauvage" the village boy of Saint Sulpice, was 
now to be an ambassador of Christ — and as such these 
old men honoured him. 

His head sank in humility. Protest died before 
the higher thought, and the ceremony became a fresh 
consecration of himself then- — and for his lifetime, a 
memory that did at critical moments gird him in 
honour and duty and right. 

"My heart was almost suffocated with emotions," 
writes Father Lacombe himself of this occasion in 
his INIemoirs, "when, the prayer for travellers being 
said. His LordshijD called me to the altar and leaving 
me stand there before the tabernacle this venerable 
bishop lowered himself to my feet to kiss them. 
Then his coadjutor, and one after another all the 
priests of the Palace. . . . Ah! . . . The 
ceremony was finished, but for me its memory will 
endure forever. Still to-day in my difficulties and 



16 FATHER LACOMBE 1849 

hardships I think with new courage of that solemn 
moment and I see again those men, long since disap- 
peared from the world, but who watch from above, 
praying for me in Heaven," 

The bishop in a voice heavy with feeling added a 
brief partuig word. He reminded him, says the Me- 
langes Religieiuc, of the immensity of the sacrifice he 
had imposed upon himself and of the dangers he 
would incur. . . . "My dear friend, my brother," 
he continued feelinglj'-, "we cannot go with you on 
your journey, but you will be accompanied by our 
prayers and our hearts' best wishes. . . . 

"Go where the Spirit of God has called you. Go 
to those nations still seated in darkness and ignorance. 
Go to console them and make them children of God. 
May the holy angels accompany you. Go, in fine, 
with all our dearest wishes and represent there the 
diocese of Montreal," Then bending toward the 
young priest, he concluded solemnly: 

"My son, never forget your holy and precious call- 
ing. . . . If God is with you, who can be against 
you?" 

The follovring morning Father Lacombe left La- 
chine, still the point of embarkation for the Pays d'en 
Haut as it had been ten years earlier when the bri- 
gades of canoes set out amid cheers and the songs of 
the voyageurs. 

As the primitive steamboat pushed away from the 
dock the youthful passenger sought his cabin and 
fought the pain of leave-taking like a man. He was 



1849 FATHER LACOMBE 17 

glad to land at Buffalo, for neither captain nor crew 
had been considerate of the shy young priest who 
spoke very little English. The crew, of a rough class 
and unsympathetic to his race and creed, did not 
trouble to hide their jeers at his long cassock — his 
"petticoat/' as thej^ termed it. 

From Buffalo through to Dubuque the journey 
was made by boat and by stage alternately. Occa- 
sionally his fellow-passengers made themselves as 
objectionable as the boat's crew had been. In all his 
love-sheltered days — among the cliild-hearted, cour- 
teous folk of Saint Sulpice and with the refined and 
gentle men of L'Assomption and the Palace — ^lie had 
seen nothing of the rougher side of life. He conse- 
quently chronicles that journey as one of the most 
triste experiences of his life. 

It was arranged that he should go first to Dubuque 
in Iowa where Bishop Loras resided; for the mission 
of Pembina on the Red River, whither he was bound, 
was then in the diocesan limits of Dubuque. He 
was received with wondering kindness by the vener- 
able bishop and Ms vicar, Father Cretin. Both 
marvelled at his air of extreme youth. On Sunday 
he took part in the celebration of the Feast of the 
Assumption, the patronal feast of the Church in the 
United States, and preached his first sermon. 

He spoke in French, for Dubuque was peopled 
largely with French-Canadians. The bishop, who 
formally assigned Father Lacombe to his new field, 
was a cultured and pious priest from old France — 



18 FATHER LACOMBE 1849 

"with the mind of a statesman and the heart of a 
saint." He had worked in Alabama for many years 
and was then busily encouraging settlers to come to 
the rich prairies of Iowa. 

The stay with Bishop Loras at Dubuque refreshed 
the young traveller, and he resumed his journey with 
new courage. On the bishop's advice he did not wear 
the soutane that had subjected him to such rudeness 
on the way from Canada, but the precaution was un- 
necessary. The captain and crew of the boat bound 
for St. Paul, with typical western tolerance, treated 
him very kindly and even helped him in his efforts to 
learn English. 

For twelve days the boat puffed its slow way up 
the current, passing occasional encampments of In- 
dians on the green banks. Here in the stillness and 
free airs of the wilderness the spirit of the great West 
first came to Father Lacombe. "I began to breathe 
freely at last; I felt myself a new man," he says of 
those delightful days on the Mississippi. 

One day the boatmen called to liim that St. Paul 
was at hand. He hurried forward to look on the 
scattered settlement of log-houses, whose occupants 
were Imrrying down to the riverside to meet the boat. 
As Father Lacombe found his way up the hill along 
a path destined to widen into one of the main streets 
of St. Paul the metropolis. Father Ravoux came hur- 
rying down to greet him. 

St. Paul, which had dropped its disreputable old 
name of Pig's Eye to adopt the name of Abbe Gal- 



184-9 FATHER LACOMBE 19 

tier's mission, consisted of about thirty primitive log 
buildings built near the church and inhabited by 
French-Canadians, Metis and a few American 
traders. The house in wliich Father Ravoux enter- 
tained his young guest and on whose site a large news- 
paper office now stands was of logs and about eigh- 
teen feet square. It had been built by Abbe Galtier 
in 1841, serving as chapel and residence, and two years 
after Father Lacombe's visit the new Bishop Cretin 
took possession of it as his first episcopal palace. 

Father Ravoux brought the Canadian into this bare 
little dwelling and asked him to consider himself mas- 
ter there while he waited for the Red River brigade 
to come. "For my part," he continued, "I must re- 
turn to my headquarters at Fort Snelling this after- 
noon. You will officiate here to-morrow." 

"But where am I to sleep?" the newcomer asked. 

"Why, here," said tlie older priest, pointing to a 
long narrow box. "That box has blankets inside. 
Just open it up." 

"But that's a coffin!" Father Lacombe cried, shud- 
dering as his sensitive nature recoiled at the thought. 

"Yes," the other agreed in the most matter of fact 
way. "A half-breed died in the woods the other day 
and I helped to make his coffin. It was too short, 
and we had to make another. I kept this one. It 
is very useful ; I only had blankets before." 

Studying English, listening to the j^arns of the 
trappers and traders sunning themselves on the gos- 
sip-benches of the little village. Father Lacombe 



go FATHER LACOMBE 1849 

waited one month for the arrival of Father Belcourt's 
brigade. This was a new experience and his heart 
rose to it as he watched the train of clumsy carts come 
creaking down the trail. They were drawn by oxen, 
and the brigade was manned by a couple of Canadian 
freemen,^ a Metis ^ and an Indian. 

They loaded up the carts with supphes for the mis- 
sion; then one day late in September they set out 
for Pembina, with Father Ravoux and the whole vil- 
lage looking on. They called out cheery adieux; the 
drivers snapped their long whips and the slow-breath- 
ing animals plodded along the trail aglow now with 
autumn tints. 

The Pembina men announced early to the new- 
comer that the trails were bad through the woods, 
where they were obliged to travel for fear of the 
roving Indians. But nothing they said prepared him 
for the muddy roads, the marshes and creeks swollen 
by recent rain. At times their oxen and carts sank 
deep in a swamp, and the entire party was obliged 
to get into harness to draw them out, after they had 
carried most of the provisions on their backs to firm 
ground. 

When in the neighborhood of Lac Rouge, in the 
country of a band of Saulteaux called the Plunderers, 
a fairly large party of these Indians suddenly came 
upon them. 

1 Former servants of the Hudson's Bay Company whose term of con- 
tract had expired. 

2 Metis — A person of mixed blood, and consequently a more correct 
term than "half-breeds" for natives who were in part Indians. 




Winnipeg in 1870 




First Cathedral of St. Paul 
The rear half is the room occupied by Father Lacombe in 1849 



1849 FATHER LACOMBE 21 

They exacted a tribute of food. It was not their 
intention to make war on a Blackrobe and Metis, 
but they proposed to exercise their right as master of 
that bit of territorjr. Probably, too, they were hungry. 
In any case the lordly braves went through the carts, 
took out what they wanted of provisions and articles 
intended for the mission. Then reducing the bri- 
gade's men to a proper state of subjection by threats 
the high-handed knights of the road went off in great 
good-humour. 

The little party lightened their carts by caching 
some of their freight, then pushed on. They had 
about sickened of the trip as well as exhausted their 
pemmican when they met another caravan by which 
Father Belcourt had sent provisions. They pushed 
on with fresh spirit. 

When one nightfall the young missionary's caravan 
made its way to the end of the trail, the first snowfall 
of the year was enveloping them in a ghostly mist, 
through which the lights of the rude mission-place 
set down in the wilderness shone as a goal of delights. 

Father Belcourt came bustling out to meet him and 
drew him into the grateful light of the hearth. He 
was another sort of man than Loras or Ravoux — less 
fine-fibred, but splendidly strong and able to cope 
with any band of Indians or any western emergency. 
He held sway like an Emperor in this woodland king- 
dom, by force of his personality as well as by his of- 
fice. 



Ill 

Here in the forest-mission of Pembina, Father 
Lacombe was to serve the apprenticeship to his hfe- 
work, his wander jahre between youth and the serious 
battlefield of life. 

The mission had been established in 1818 by Rev. 
Severe Dumoulin, who with Father Provencher had 
answered Lord Selkirk's request for priests. A num- 
ber of French freemen once employed by the North- 
West Company had settled with their Metis famihes 
about Pembina. In 1824 many of these settlers 
founded a new home on the White Horse Plains 
across the border. Pembina, however, remained a 
mission-headquarters for the wandering Saulteaux, 
and when Father Lacombe arrived was a village of 
some size composed of American half-breeds and In- 
dians. 

He at once bent himself to the study of Saulteau, 
one of the Algonquin dialects. He did not find the 
task difficult, for then and throughout his life In- 
dian languages had a strong fascination for him. He 
had the further advantage of using a dictionary and 
grammar composed by Father Belcourt. 

In December the two men went to St. Boniface to 
pay their respects to Bishop Provencher. On their 
return home Father Lacombe again applied himself 



1850 FATHER LACOMBE 23 

to his studies, taking spiritual charge as well of the 
mission, while his intrepid superior spent the winter 
journeying by dog-sleighs and on foot hundreds of 
miles though the forest. 

The young missionary was not dissatisfied with his 
first season at Pembina. That is perhaps the best 
that can be said of it. He found his small flock de- 
vout and attentive to their religious exercises during 
the long quiet winter. He did not lack food of a 
rough order, nor did he have any hardship to endure. 
But the lack of congenial company and the com- 
parative inactivity weighed on him. He found 
vent for his restless energies only in his Indian studies. 
These he devoured and consequently made notable 
advance. 

Spring came with warm breaths from the South- 
land, pushing the anemones and bloodroot up like lit- 
tle friends to greet the lonely young priest. It 
sounded, too, a reveille to the languid Metis. One day 
a band of them came down the river in canoes from 
their winter camp. Almost daily others followed by 
the river or across the plains, for Pembina was a 
famous rendezvous of the buffalo-hunters. 

At last all the INIetis of that region had gathered 
there. The Mission grew in a few days to the pro- 
portions of a town, and the woodland was dotted with 
tents. The Pembina Metis had sowed and planted 
their gardens, and were now ready with the keenest 
anticipation for the yearly excursion to the prairies. 

This was the Golden Age of the Indian and Metis, 



24 FATHER LACOMBE 1850 

when the bison still roamed the great plains in unnum- 
bered thousands. The tender . buff alo flesh, dried, 
fresh or pounded, made a food both appetizing and 
nutritious; the buffalo skin made robes for garments 
and bedding, hide for tepees and canoes; while on the 
unwooded plains the sun-dried manure served the 
purpose of fuel. 

The buffalo in fine was the chief factor of life in 
the West; its pursuit the chief joy of the native. 
From the first tlie missionaries had learned to look on 
the time of this buffalo-hunt as most favourable for 
teaching Christian doctrines to the Indians. They 
were then most comfortable and correspondingly 
amiable, and in the long evenings or longer days when 
they sat simning themselves while the women pre- 
pared the meat of the last kill the Indian warrior 
smoked his pipe happily and listened with pleasure 
to the old story of the Redemption. 

It fell to Father Lacombe's lot to be the cliaplain 
of the great Hunt in 1850. He was alive to the 
pleasures and novelty of his new assigmnent, for all 
about him the preparations of his people were tinged 
with joyousness and excitement. He took a hand in 
the preparations, but unfortunately as he was squar- 
ing a board to mend his mission-cart the broad-axe 
slipped and cut his right foot badly. 

To his intense regret Father Belcourt decided he 
should remain at the Mission, but the sympathetic 
Metis perceiving his disappointment and anxious for 
his company begged his superior to let the young 



1850 FATHER LACOMBE 25 

priest — the Monias — come. They promised to take 
every care of him, and Father Belcourt yielded. 

On the great eve Father Lacombe called the band 
together. In the open air they recited with him the 
evening prayers and startled the forest-echoes with 
their lusty rendering of the hymns Father Belcourt 
had translated into Indian. 

"No order," says Father Lacombe, "had been ob- 
sei"ved up to this in their mode of arrival or their 
preparations, but Voila! how the scene changes 
. . . !" The women and children withdrew after 
prayers to their lodges, and the fine discipline of a 
military camp suddenly pervaded the assembly. The 
hunters held a council to select, by a majority of 
votes, a Chief and ten captains, who in turn selected 
ten or fifteen others to act as scouts. Then they drew 
up anew the laws of the hunt, which were as the 
laws of the JNIedes and Persians — incontestable by the 
most independent onee they were accepted. 

The half-breed hunter Wilkie, who had been 
elected Chief, rose at the close of the council and 
asked for the hunters' acceptance of these laws as a 
whole. This being done by a majority of voices the 
Chief declared solemnly: 

"If any among you do not approve of these laws, 
let him leave our camp and come not with us, for 
once we have set out together from this encampment 
no one will be free to separate from us." 

No man left the assembly; they silently approved 
of its laws. These related to the time and mode of 



26 FATHER LACOMBE 1850 

chasing buffalo, to the patrol of the camp by the 
guards and to the penalties fixed for the infringement 
of any of these laws. 

The scene of departure next morning is given in 
detail by Father Lacombe: 

"After an early Mass next morning the signal of 
departure was given by the guide of the day with 
a little flag. In an instant a great commotion ran 
through the whole camp. The lodges of skin and 
the tents were pulled down, the horses were brought 
into a corral from the prairie and the women made 
haste to pack into the carts their small household 
goods. Then the women and children took seats in 
the carts — the hunters mounted their buffalo-runners 
. . . and the camp set out on its mai-ch." 

This remarkable procession, like some patriarchal 
exodus in the days of Jacob, moved slowly out over 
the dewy prairie shining a green-gold in the level sun- 
light. Propped up as comfortably as might be in 
a Red River cart Father Lacombe, watchful of his 
bandaged foot, was now off on the first of his many 
buffalo-hunts. He estimates there were from 800 to 
1,000 carts in the camp that year and over 1,000 men, 
women and children, as well as hundreds of fine ponies 
for buffalo runners, cart horses, oxen and innumer- 
able dogs. 

Close on to the sixth day out, as the prairie air lay 
drenched in the mellow gold of the afternoon sun — 
and the slow-moving cavalcade began to throw long 
shadows across the tender grass, the Metis' long dis- 



1850 FATHER L'ACOMBE 27 

orderly lines drew near to the Turtle Mountains. 
Scouts pushing on ahead saw in the distance an im- 
mense herd of buffalo, and thrilled with delight they 
hurried to the nearest hill and signalled the good news 
to their party. 

The information flashed back by the flags was in- 
toxicating. Joy like an infectious laugh ran through 
the whole regiment of marching Metis, and the buf- 
falo-ponies, keen for the hunt as their masters were, 
understood the sudden commotion and halt. In a 
trice the women, children and old men dragged out 
the lodge poles and skins and erected the camp. 
The hunting-ponies were led aside, swiftly mounted 
— and presto ! in a flash men and horses hurled them- 
selves against the herd. 

In full gallop. Father Lacombe with them, they 
flashed along the prairie and in less time than an on- 
looker could credit it the bluff, on which the scouts 
had paused, was covered with this cavalry of the 
plains. . . . U-la-la! On the green rolling 
prairies stretching before them to the horizon buffalo 
were grazing — ^thousands of them, forming a billowy 
black lake on the prairie. 

"Our captains," writes Father Lacombe, "gave the 
word, and the hunters instantly fell into place form- 
ing one immense hne of attack. It was all done with 
the least possible noise or commotion, so that the un- 
suspecting animals might not be aroused. For while 
their vision is short, their hearing and power of smell 
are very acute. Our ponies lined up without direc- 



28 FATHER LACOMBE 1850 

tion from their masters, pawing up the short herbage 
and dust — as ardent for the chase as the riders they 
carried." 

Father Lacombe recited an Act of Contrition to 
which the hunters responded with bent heads. They 
raised their eyes, took a long glad survey from the 
bluff — then — 

"En avant!" the leader cried, and men and horses 
as one flew forward with whirlwind velocity — and the 
poor stupid buffalo pitilessly trapped broke into con- 
fused flight. 

The stillness of the plains was broken with the 
heavy thunder of stampeded bison, the shrillings of 
the Metis and the tumult of the rushing ponies 
blended with the animals' mad bellowing. 

"What a scene! What confusion!" writes Father 
Lacombe in reminiscence. "The story of combats 
of Spanish bulls furious at their adversaries conveys 
a feeble picture compared to this magnificent attack. 
. . . of the men of the prairie attacking, defying, 
maddening the great beast of the plains. The buf- 
falo, naturally timid and fearful, grows enraged at 
his pursuers, and from the moment he is wounded he 
becomes terrible and dangerous." 

The Cossack and his marvels of horsemanship, the 
cowboy and his feats of broncho-riding have had their 
praises sung the world over — but the Metis buffalo- 
hunters of the Canadian plains has never yet had his 
due. These hunts, as described by Father Lacombe, 
were always filled with marvels of horsemanship. 



1850 FATHER LACOMBE 29 

. . . The hunter's daring as he urged his pony in 
and out labyrinth paths among the doomed buf- 
falo, was fiendish: he was exposing himself momenta- 
rily to be thrown from his horse and trampled into 
the earth under a hundred ci'uel insentient hoofs, or 
to become a human j^lajiihing tossed again and again 
into the air from the horns of an enraged animal. 

As the hunters pressed on to harry the buffaloes, 
thej^ dropped the reins, guiding their ponies by the 
j)ressure of their limbs only, or bending their half- 
naked supple bodies now to this side, then to that — 
while the trained pony responded with an obedience 
that made rider and pony one. Each hunter car- 
ried a powder-horn at his belt and bullets in his 
mouth; and discharging and reloading their short 
flint-lock muskets with incredible dexterity, they 
aimed at vital parts of the huge blundering beasts 
beside them. 

Sometimes in their driving haste a bullet slipped 
down in the barrel of the gun and the charge ex- 
ploded, lacerating the unfortunate Indian or Metis — 
and the end was a tragedy! . . . Again borne 
along in the exaltation of the chase, guiding the pony 
with his body and repeatedly discharging his gun, 
the hunter wounded several buffalo in what seemed 
but one flash. And the joy and lust of the slaughter 
entered into him, driving him on to new feats. 

The attack was short, terrible and altogether de- 
cisive. The melee of man and beast, the industrious, 
designed work of carnage that day near the Turtle 



30 FATHER LACOMBE 1850 

Mountain lasted about twenty minutes ; by which time 
the inunense herd of buffalo was utterly put to rout. 
Hundreds of wounded animals strewed the plains: 
but on this occasion to Father Lacombe's anxious de- 
light there were no accidents. No hunter, but lately 
exultant, lay moaning in the brief hour of pain that 
bridges the glory of the hunt — and Stillness. 

Far out over the plains the scattered herd drew 
together again, and from some fruitless pursuit or 
successful skirmish the exhausted men and their ponies 
gathered in about the scene of combat. The hunters 
went out to look for the animals each had killed. The 
wounded buffalo groaned on every side. Some in- 
furiated beasts, although mortally woxmded, main- 
tained themselves standing, vomiting blood yet stub- 
bornly fighting against Death. They were incarnate 
Furies making a last stand on their own battleground. 

The turmoil of the hunt was scarcely over before 
the stillness of the plains was broken by a new, lighter 
clamour. . . . Delighted women and children 
were hastening from the camp with carts drawn by 
old ponies, useless for running but well able to haul 
back the spoils. 

Close on to 800 buffalo had been killed. 

The hunters sought out their own spoils among 
the carcasses. They killed the wounded animals, em- 
ploying their knives with a mar\^ellous dexterity. 
"The head, feet and entrails of the buffalo remained 
on the field and became the portion of the wolves who 
scented the slaughter from afar off," Father Lacombe 



1850 FATHER LACOMBE SI 

writes, "and came by hundreds over the plains to 
throw themselves on the reeking debris after the hun- 
ters had gone." 

In picturesque disorder the party made its way 
back through the cool evening airs to the fires of the 
camp by Turtle JNlountains. The meat had been 
piled on the creaking carts by the women and hunters, 
and the latter with their labours concluded walked 
beside their tired mounts or rode them at a gentle 
lope over the prairie, preceding the carts and the 
womenfolk. 

It was a triimiphal procession of the primitive man. 

At the camp the ponies were turned free. The 
liunters sat about the fires, smoking and living the 
brief wild hunt over again. Meanwhile the women 
picked out the choicest bits of fresh meat and cooked 
a savoury meal for their lords. 

The following day the Metis in hundreds climbed 
with Father Lacombe to the top of Turtle Mountain 
and planted there a large wooden cross. The camp re- 
mained at this point for several days while the women 
after the centuries-old fashion of their sex dressed 
the buffalo skins and dried the meat. Father La- 
combe watched their work with the interested eyes 
of the newcomer. They first cut up the meat in very 
long strips which they stretched to dry on scaffolds 
made of young trees. After two or three days' ex- 
posure to the sun the meat was sufficiently dry for the 
women to fold it into packages tightly bound with 
sinew, each bundle weighing from 60 to 70 poimds. 



33 FATHER LACOMBE 1850 

Then with their stone mallets they pounded dried 
meat to powder in wooden bowls, mixing hot grease 
and dried berries with it, packing the whole into 
large sacks of buffalo-hide, called by the Metis — tau- 
reauoc. . . . This was pimik-kan, the manna of 
the Canadian prairies. 

On these hunting-trips the chaplain's post was not 
one of sweet doing-nothing. He was the father of 
the party, the physician, counsellor and arbiter of 
quarrels. Every morning at early dawn mass was 
said in his tent, and while Father Lacombe knelt after 
Mass in the customary thanksgiving there was per- 
fect stillness in the camp, for the Indians and Metis 
alike respected the prayers and meditations of the 
Praying-man. During the day there were catechism 
classes for the children, and instruction for the women 
and aged people left in the camp while the men 
hunted. 

Some days w^hen the hunters were at home resting 
while the women did their share of the community- 
work, they brought themselves and their pipes around 
the priest's tent and listened to him or helped him in 
his study of Saulteau. And in the evening when all 
the camp was quiet; when the little coppery babies 
had fallen asleep and the dogs sank into slumber in 
gorged content, Father Lacombe would ring his bell 
and gather the whole camp about his tent. 

There they sang hymns and prayed, until the priest 
said good-night to them, and the moccasined congre- 
gation withdrew quietly to their tepees and repoae. 



1850 FATHER LACOMBE 33 

. . . The horses were hobbled within the circle 
of tents; the night-sentinels kept sleepless vigil — and 
the silence of the wide prairie fell upon the camp, 
upon the young Praying-man and his docile flock. 

"You can never publish and I can never express 
how good these Metis children of the prairies were," 
Father Lacombe has observed. "In that Golden Age 
when they hunted buffalo and practised our Chris- 
tianity — ^^vith the fervour of the first Christians — 
their lives were blameless. They were a beautiful 
race then — those children of the prairies." 

For three months this pleasant, primitive existence 
continued, with long days of sunny quiet following 
upon the exciting moments of the chase. The hunts 
were manj'-, and before the camp turned home toward 
Pembina each family had made ample provision for 
the next winter. They had stores of dried meat and 
pemmican for their own food as well as many bales of 
leather and meat and grease to exchange with the 
traders. 

INIoreover — "Each one had laid on a goodly supply 
of fat," says Father Lacombe, "which would serve 
him as a fine blanket fo withstand the cold season." 

Day hj day as the winding cavalcade of laden carts 
and hunters neared Pembina little bands of hunters 
dropped out of the ranks and made their way to Fort 
Garry or other points. The power and authority of 
President Wilkie ceased to exist, and every man was 
free to direct his steps wherever he wished. 



IV 

When Father Lacombe's cart stopped before the 
mission-house and his superior came out to greet him 
— warmly, but with the quizzical smile of the expe- 
rienced — the younger man suddenly became conscious 
of the figure he made. He was unmistakably a re- 
turned chaplain of the hunt; his face was burnt to 
copper by the ardent sun; his soutane was soiled and 
frayed, even ragged in places. He remembered that 
the altar-linen and small ornaments of his portable 
chapel were in sad disarray and odorous of wood- 
smoke. 

"But what of all that?" he asks. "Did I not come 
back happy of the good I had been permitted to do?" 
Souls kept reconciled to their Maker, sins prevented 
by the presence of the priest in the camp — ^what did 
the ragged soutane or the smoky linen matter? 

For another winter Father Lacombe was left in 
charge of the Pembina mission. The ministerial du- 
ties of the young missionary were not heavy ; his flock 
was small. He applied himself as assiduously as be- 
fore to master the language. Perhaps some of the 
charm of novelty had worn away for a spirit naturally 
restless. In any case he found this winter a hard one. 

While sensitive and impressionable — ahnost poetic 
M 



1860 FATHER LACOMBE 35 

— in temperament he was assuredly, too, of a nature 
born to rule. But there was nothing here to dominate 
— no opposition to overcome! There seemed no out- 
let for his energies. He knew that all about him in 
this storied Pays dfen Haut, land of adventure and 
freedom, men were living out their lives as they would. 
The reckless blood of many an ancestor who had 
known his brief day of glory and freedom among 
the voyageurs stirred in him at the thought. He was 
restless and moody. 

Did the man hear the spirit of the wild calling? 
If he did, the priest throttled the response, and with 
the subtler heroism that wins no acclaim carried out 
the round of each day's duties. He would have in- 
finitely preferred the hardships and wanderings of 
Father Belcourt, his combat with the elements and 
the indifference of some of the tribes. But here he 
was left . . . like an old woman about the fire, 
because he was young and green and could not speak 
Indian fluently! At this thought he would set him- 
self with fierce ardour to master the dialect. 

Often, too, in his inner vision of Montreal's gray 
streets two thousand miles away he saw again that 
dim chapel in the Bishop's Palace — with the softened 
voices of children at play outside; with the good 
French-Canadian homes about and his brother-priests 
praying beside and for him ; and above it all he always 
heard the gravely sweet accents of his beloved old 
guardian : 

"Go, my son, and ne^er forget your holy and 



36 FATHER LACOMBE 1851 

precious calling. . . . If God is with you, who 
can be against you?" 

There was the rock on which the tidal forces of 
Nature broke. It was his priesthood alone that kept 
Albert Lacombe that winter from faring out over the 
forests and prairies — a voyageur, an Indian. 

Spring came and Father Belcourt with it, and soon 
after the hunters re-assembled for the summer hunt. 
Father Lacombe went with them again as chaplain, 
but on their return, when the small harvest of their 
fields and gardens was gathered in, and even the long 
insistent singing of the grasshoppers had failed — the 
young priest saw the ghost of another such winter as 
the last approach — and he simply told himself he could 
not meet it. Discretion undoubtedly is at times the 
better part of valour. 

He decided to go back to Montreal, until he could 
arrange to return to the western missions in another 
capacity. He planned, though vaguely, to join some 
religious order — perhaps the Oblates, a new order 
from France of which he had heard Bishop Proven- 
cher speak highly. 

The rules of a religious order, he knew, in the sta- 
tioning of its men and in periodical reunions, made 
special provision for the spiritual as well as material 
well-being of a man. Realizing the conflict of his 
years and his voyageur blood with the consecration 
of his life he decided he must have the sustaining in- 
fluence of the Order's discipline and the assistance of 
brethren. 



1852 FATHER LACOMBE 37 

Father Belcourt agreed it was best for the young 
priest to follow his own counsel. 

From St. Paul he retraced his voyage of 1849 to 
Montreal. After a brief visit to his parents he went 
to pass the winter with the venerable cure of Ber- 
thier, Abbe Gagnon, whom he assisted in his duties. 

In March of the following year, 1852, the new co- 
adjutor bishop of St. Boniface passed through Que- 
bec. Father Lacombe decided this was his oppor- 
tunity and hurried to offer the bishop his services for 
the Red River missions. 

This was a notable meeting. The two young 
missionaries, twenty-five and twenty-eight years old 
respectively, offered excellent types of the two classes 
of the French-Canadian — the aristocrat and the hab- 
itant. Each was strong of physique though far from 
tall. Both had vivid dark faces lit hy keen eyes ; both 
were full of magnetism and energy, blessed with a 
playful humour and sympathetic to a remarkable de- 
gree. 

The bishop was a man of scholarly tastes ; the other 
a man of action and piety. The bishop's manner was 
graceful, easy and dignified, while behind the shyness 
and humility of the younger man was the dormant 
sense of power wliich was to develop into such native 
imperiousness. In each was the blood of daring men 
and enduring pioneer women, although of different 
classes. 

Bishop Tache had no Indian ancestry and no in- 
souciant voyageur behind him, but besides several gen- 



38 FATHER LACOMBE 1852 

erations of military men and statesmen there were 
among his mother's ancestors the name of JoHet the 
explorer, the Bouchers and Varennes de la Veran- 
drye, the first and dauntless explorer of the Canadian 
West. 

Two hours after they met, Father Lacombe began 
preparations for returning to the Westl His land 
of Destiny was still beckoning to him. 

Arriving at St. Boniface in 1852 with Bishop 
Tache and Father GroUier, Father Lacombe found 
the village in gloom. This was the year of the great 
floods along the Red River : houses and barns had been 
swept away, cattle drowned. The cathedral and pal- 
ace being built of stone had become public warehouses 
and places of retreat. 

The gloomy outlook for the winter season was as 
disheartening to Bishop Provencher as to his Metis, 
but fresh courage came to the venerable prelate with 
the arrival of the three energetic young men. 

Father Lacombe's unexpected coming seemed to 
him entirely providential. It had been decided that 
Father Lacombe should make his novitiate at St. Bon- 
iface and acquaint himself with the constitution and 
discipline of the Oblate Order before taking up ac- 
tive missionary work. These plans were speedily 
upset on his arrival. 

Father Thibault, who had gone up the Saskatche- 
wan in 1841, had just arrived from Fort Edmonton 
by the spring brigade, utterly worn out with his la- 



1852 FATHER LACOMBE 39 

bours. Father Bourassa, left there in charge, in- 
tended to return in the following spring. Bishop 
Provencher was at his wits' end to find a successor for 
these men — when Bishop Tache arrived with his un- 
announced companion. 

As the old Bishop's eyes fell upon the robust young 
missionary he felt that there was the man for whom 
he looked. Providence had been obviously kind. 
When he talked with his coadjutor the difficulty of 
the novitiate arose. Still the very night the party 
arrived Bishop Provencher called Father Lacombe 
to his room and taking the young man's hands in his 
own, he appealed to him to renounce his year of novi- 
tiate and to go at once into the mission-field. At the 
close of his plea Father Lacombe recalling his Pem- 
bina experience urged his need of belonging to a re- 
ligious Order. 

"But what is to become of the mission to these 
people? Would j'ou see it abandoned?" the bishop 
still pleaded. "I pray you gi-ant me what I ask," he 
insisted humbly but powerfully. 

The knowledge of this old man's sacrifice in 1818 
when Lord Selkirk's appeal first brought him West 
lent force to his plea ; while the intensity and hvmiility 
of the enfeebled prelate moved Father Lacombe to 
the quick. He asked to be given the night to con- 
sider what he should do. The next morning he came 
to the bishop and slipping to his knees at the feet of 
the old man, yielded his own wishes. "My Lord, I 
cannot resist any longer. I consent to do what you 



40 FATHER LACOMBE 1852 

desire and will leave it all in the hands of your co- 
adjutor, my superior." 

In this way Father Lacombe came to be assigned 
to the Edmonton district, and with Father Gr oilier, a 
recent volunteer from France, he soon left for his 
post. Early in July, with the cathedral chimes ring- 
ing a parting salute, the party for the North took 
leave of St. Boniface. They parted on the banks of 
the Red River with the noble Provencher, who was in 
a few months to pass into Eternity. 

At Cumberland House Father Lacombe continued 
west in company with Chief Factor Rowand, who 
ruled as governor over a district that ran from Cum- 
berland House to the Rockies. This man, who was 
the most notable of the Company's officials on the 
plains then, was an Irishman, a little man with eyes 
of blue steel, an incomparable temper and a spirit 
that did not know what fear was. He was intellec- 
tually bright, tlie master of several Indian dialects 
and could terrorize an Indian in any of them. 

The journey was made all day long in the open, 
in the superb weather of the western summer with 
crystal clear airs and radiant sunshine. There were 
no mosquitoes, and no serious sickness among the men, 
of whom there were about eighty engaged in hauling 
the ten York boats up the river. 

At night the boatmen camped a la belle etoile, but 
with no eyes for the beauty of the night after their 
slavish toil in the leather harness all day. Daylight 



1852 FATHER LACOMBE 41 

lingers long on the Saskatchewan, and it was used to 
the full for these trips. 

The young priest's heart ached for the boatmen. 
. . . This then was the reality of life for the dash- 
ing voyageurs who had left Quebec parishes with such 
fine hopes of western freedom ! The canoes had been 
done away with, the drudgery of these stout capa- 
cious boats was their lot — "Faugh! it was to be as the 
slaves in Africa," he said to himself; and even after 
fifty years had passed Father Lacombe spoke of the 
"tracking" of the mid-century days as a painful mem- 
ory. 

The men lived on pounded meat, pemmican, and 
water; they rarely knew the luxury of tea. Father 
Lacombe, however, ate his meals with John Rowand 
and his clerks and they had better fare — with tea 
and sugar and the finer pemmican made for the Gen- 
tlemen, together with choice bits of whatever game 
was killed along the way. All day they sat at their 
ease or walked leisurely along the banks before the 
plodding trackmen, and at night they slept under 
tents if they desired. 

Of the boatmen's toil. Father Lacombe has written: 

"Imagine, if you please, after resting a few hours 
on the bare earth, to hear at three o'clock the cry, 
'Level Level' Et puis, hurrah — ^to pull and pull 
on the lines drawing the heavy boat up against the 
current, walking in the mud, the rocks, the swamp, 
along cliffs and sometimes in water to their arm pits 



42 FATHER LACOMBE 1852 

—and this under a burning sun or beating rain from 
early morning until darkness fell about nine o'clock. 
Without having seen it one can form no idea of the 
hardships, the cruel fatigues of these boatmen." 

One of the men became sick during the trip. 
Father Lacombe ^ pitying him as he stumbled along 
in the tracking-harness went to Rowand and asked 
leave for this man to rest a few days as well as to 
share the food of their table. 

The Chief Factor was equally astonished at the 
young missionary's interference with any system of 
the Company and at the boatmen's daring to confess 
illness. But Father Lacombe was insistent, and for 
a wonder Rowand gave way somewhat. 

"Give him some of your food if you must," he said, 
"but he needs no rest. Any man who is not dead 
with three days' illness is not sick at all." 

Father Lacombe grieved inwardly, and the incident 
made a strong impression on him ; so strong that when 
they had arrived at Edmonton House and Rowand 
came showing him a very painful felon on his finger. 
Father Lacombe did what he could for him, but told 
him pointedly: "You are not suffering, Rowand!" 

Three days later wliile the Chief Factor stiU suf- 
fered Father Lacombe went to him with a purpose. 

"I had to say what was in my mind," he says, 
"though I feared trouble might come of it. I had to 

1 John Norris of Edmonton, who was one of the 1852 brigade, could 
recall for me almost sixty years later the pleasant ways arid sympathy 
of the new missionary with the crew. 



1852 FATHER LACOMBE "43 

touch that man of Iron. I went to him and said — 
not that I was sorry, but — 'You will understand what 
I mean, my friend, when I tell you that you are not 
sick. Three daj's have passed now, and you are not 
dead. So of course you are not sick; it is all imagi- 
nation.' 

"His face took on an awful cloud. If I had not 
been his friend and a priest, I believe he would have 
struck me. Hah! he was Uke a can of powder^-that 
little man!" 

On September 19th, as the boatmen sprang up 
from their earth-beds and blankets at dawn everyone 
was conscious of a new spirit abroad in the camp. 
The boatmen appeared newly resplendent in red- 
woolen shirts with fresh kerchiefs binding their heads 
and knotted tartanwise over their left shoulder. They 
had reached the home-lap; they felt the atmosphere, 
and fatigue was forgotten, while they pulled up past 
the unsuspected bar of gold-bearing sand that would 
lay hidden until Tom Clover should come over the 
mountains with his grizzly and gold-pan; past the 
shrubby flats and up between the high green banks 
to the landing below the Fort. 

Against the clear autumn sky there furled and 
unfurled there the conquering flag of England with 
the magic letters — "H. B. C." — long ago interpreted 
by some wit in the service as "Here before Christ." 
Above the timber palisade on the hilltop the deep- 
sloping roof of the Big House marked the woodland 
court of this fiery little Governor. 



44 FATHER LACOMBE 1862 

For days a keen look-out had been kept for the 
packet and now at the first sight of the boats swinging 
around the green headland to the east the news was 
trumpeted through the courtyard and ran from house 
to house. The steward hastened to run the ensign 
up; another made the cannons ready for the salute, 
and the inhabitants of the Fort flocked down the 
winding path to the river, for this was the greatest 
event of the year at Edmonton House. 

The shore was soon lined with people: Harriot the 
trader who had married Nancy Rowand, Sophy and 
Peggy and Adelaide Rowand eager to welcome their 
father home, clerks from the trading-shop, women 
and children from the men's quarters and Indians 
from neighbouring tepees. 

On the harge allege (Ogimaw-osie) in which Row- 
and and Father Lacombe sat the pennant of the Com- 
pany flew at the prow, and behind this came the other 
boats racing to be first, as with gay halloos and 
snatches of Canadian songs each man strove in the 
eyes of his home-folk to be the first to leap ashore. 
"En roulant ma boule. . . . Hon! — hon! — hon!" 
the snatches of Canadian boat-songs rose, with 
through them the wildly sweet chant of the ancient 
Algonquin canoe-song of the voyageurs: 

"Moniang nind onjiba 

Mondaminek niji kasowin. . . ." 

The cannons in the bastions thundered a welcome 
when the Chief Factor stepped ashore, and the echoes 



1852 FATHER LACOMBE 45 

were multiplied by the quick fire of the Indians' mus- 
ketry. Rowand was pleasantly assailed with greet- 
ing as he passed up the steep hill-path through the 
crowd, for however peppeiy and dominating their 
"Governor" was at times he had a very warm heart, 
loved and was loved by his people. 

The young missionary walking beside him felt him- 
self an object of vivid curiosity on the part of the 
crowd, which in turn he scanned with interest as he 
returned their hearty hand-clasps. The boatmen, 
promptly seized upon by their relatives and friends, 
retailed the news of the distant forts while with the 
mellowed radiance of the evening sun a great serenity 
fell upon the woodland community. 

For each white man there was hope of some home- 
message in the packet of mail being sorted at the Big 
House, and for aU there was the knowledge that these 
boats drawn up on the shore had arrived safely with 
tobacco and ammunition and goods for another year. 



Now at Fort Edmonton, the most important post 
west of Norway House, Father Lacombe found him- 
self fully embarked upon his life work, master of his 
own actions, thrown on his own resources and initi- 
ative as he desired to be. 

After journeying to Lac Ste. Anne to greet Father 
Bourassa, he set about finding a home for himself for 
the winter. The Chief Factor came to his assistance 
by lending him one of the buildings within the pal- 
isades, situated directly east of the river-gateway. It 
served him for both chapel and residence. 

The Fort itself was at first a daily source of wonder 
and interest to the newcomer. It was like some rude 
baronial stronghold in the feudal ages of the Old 
World, with the liege's hall and retainers' cottages all 
safely enclosed within high palisades surmounted by 
guns. The palisade, twenty feet in height, was of 
stout trees split in halves and driven into the ground 
— ^the whole strengthened by binding timbers. 
Around this, compassing the entire Fort the senti- 
nel's gallery ran, and at the four corners the peaked 
roofs of bastions rose, with the iron mouths of can- 
nons filling the port -holes. 

Massive riveted gates to which the steward alone 
held the keys gave entrance on each side to the court- 
46 



1852 FATHER LACOMBE 47 

yard which Palliser estimated as three hundred feet 
long by two hundred and ten wide. In the middle 
of the palisaded enclosure the Big House stood, and 
on the grassy plot in front of it two small brass can- 
nons mounted guard. This official residence of the 
Chief Factor was a massive building of squared tim- 
ber, about seventy feet deep and sixty wide, three 
stories high and with a gallery opening from the sec- 
ond story in front and rear. 

From this front galleiy a high stairway led down to 
the grassy courtyard, about which the Bachelors' Hall 
or Gentlemen's quarters, the Indian Hall, the men's 
quarters and warehouses Avere ranged. Within the 
Big House this stairway opened upon a wide hall, 
on either side of which lay two immense rooms, the 
Gentlemen's mess-room and the ball-room. Behind 
these were the living-rooms of Rowand's family. Be- 
low stairs were the steward's office, the armory, store- 
rooms, and cellars ; above, were offices and bed-rooms. 

This was Rowand's Folly, as the Gentlemen Ad- 
venturers were wont to call the most pretentious house 
of the Company west of York Factory. It had al- 
ready stood about thirty years, being built by Chief 
Factor Rowand after the Union, when he was given 
control of the united trading-posts of the Beaver dis- 
trict. 

Fort Edmonton, established first in 1795, had al- 
ready become the chief point of the Company's occu- 
pation on the plains, and in a few years when the 
Portage la Loche route was abandoned it was to 



48 FATHER LACOMBE 1852 

eclipse utterly the glories of old Fort Chipewyan in 
the North and become the most important post west 
of Fort Garry. 

The resident population of the post in that winter 
of 1852 was close to 150 — for the boatmen had come 
in to winter-quarters at the Post, where already were 
the Gentlemen, the Stewart, the interpreter, boat- 
builders, coopers, carpenters, hunters, blacksmiths 
and their families. The boatmen were now variously 
employed as labourers, cutting and hauling firewood 
of which immense quantities were used in the wide 
earthen fireplaces; searching for hemlock or spruce 
bark to recover the roofs of their dwellings ; repairing 
roofs and sills; rechinking log walls and securing 
further provisions of buffalo-meat and fish. 

A post of such importance was consequently a 
rather pleasant place for a new missionary to find 
himself quartered. Its palisaded quadrangle was a 
woodland principality which held intensified cheer 
from the very isolation of its environments. 

The winters were cold but the fireplaces were deep, 
the piles of spruce and aspen high and the log-houses 
warm. There were seasons each year when provisions 
ran so low that even with lessened rations there was 
no certainty of to-morrow's fast being broken, but 
equally there were the seasons of plenty, and with the 
exception of a couple of years when a colony of ob- 
streperous Norwegian boatmen were brought in (and 
had to be packed back to their native shores), the 
Orkneymen, French-Canadians, and Metis who filled 



Boc^•'or» Mall o"a " " 



^olritl.r,hc...'>f'- 



W,(|.sa/tJ.ff ■"/""■"» 






n r 






=s 




.0/f^ffflr.ho..,^/.. 



Theu,f.o(f Forf.nfU.d 



Plan q* Fopt Ldmontqn in mL. Sixties. — 



1852 FATHER LACOMBE '49 

the post were a harmonious, if rugged group of 
men. 

Father Lacombe was to experience hardships and 
some starvation in years close at hand — to hve as 
Father Thibault did first at Lac Ste. Anne, without 
bread, milk, sugar, salt and sometimes without tea. 
He was to learn what it meant to struggle against 
repugnance and to conquer "false delicacy of appe- 
tite" — forcing himself to eat unsavoury and inde- 
scribable morsels served on a piece of bark or in his 
fingers, that he might not wound the Indians' feelings 
or lose their confidence. In his own words : 

"Conquered by Hunger, we could learn to consume 
these victuals without much repugnance, for under 
the empire of this cruel stepmother the world becomes 
savage." 

But for this first year on the Saskatchewan he fared 
well, physically and mentally. He dined always at 
the mess-room in the Big House, where according to 
the semi-military discipline of the Gentlemen no 
women ate, and the meals served by Robidoux, a chef 
from Montreal, were excellent. 

Before settKng down for the winter Father 
Lacombe paid a visit to Lac la Biche, an Indian cen- 
tre 150 miles northeast of the Fort. This point had 
been visited by Father Thibault but as yet had no 
permanent mission. The trip was made in the pleas- 
ant autumn weather when the men were coming in 
from the plains and from the lakes with flat-sleighs 
laden with dried meat and fish and ducks. 



60 FATHER LACOMBE 1852 

Alexis Cardinal, a half-breed who was to share 
many perilous trips with the young missionary, went 
with him as guide. The two travelled happily all day 
in the goldem autumn weather by hills and plain and 
woodland. Pitching their camp at night they en- 
joyed a supper of game, for Alexis was already a 
famous hunter and dog-runner — ^then before dropping 
off to sleep under the stars they sat about the fire 
and silently enjoyed a pipe "of particularly fine fla- 
vour smoked a longues touches." 

Fifteen days were passed at the Lake in teaching 
the Indians, but the priest found himself so handi- 
capped by his slim laiowledge of Cree that he re- 
turned to Edmonton resolved anew to master Cree — 
"or to blow my head off," as he picturesquely phrases 
his determination. Before leaving the mission, how- 
ever, he put on his wliite surphce and stole and mount- 
ing his pony rode along the shore of the lake blessing 
the site of the present mission and dedicating it to the 
Blessed Virgin, the liege-lady of these black-robed 
knights of Christ. 

On his return to Edmonton he easily fitted his min- 
istry into the life of the post. The inhabitants of the 
Fort from Rowand down to the youngest dog-runner 
were mostly Catholic, and he busied himself instruct- 
ing young and old daily. On Sunday he tried to 
impress the Sabbath feeling by making the Mass as 
solemn as possible, and to this end taught the French- 
Canadians to sing the liturgy of the Mass. Several 



1853 FATHER LACOMBE 51 

hours each day were given to the study of Cree, which 
he describes as a dehghtful occupation. 

His master was an amiable Scotch clerk who had 
recently come in from Jasper House, where in 1845 
his wife had been baptized by Father de Smet. This 
man, Colin Fraser, had been the piper of Governor 
Simpson on the latter's princely tour of the West, and 
it is told of him Avith as much grim truth as humour, 
that when stationed at the lonely post of Jasper he 
used to take doAvn his pipes at night and dance to 
their wild skirl before his oAvn shadow on the wall. 

Fraser enjoyed his work of tutoring the vivid mind 
of the younger man night after night, for Father La- 
combe made marvellous progress. He ended each 
day by jotting down in an improvised notebook all 
the Cree words and rules of grammar he had learned. 
This became later the backbone of his dictionary. 

The days passed as pleasantly as profitably, for 
while Father Lacombe instructed his people and felt 
himself advancing daily in Cree, he was also enjoying 
the good company of the Gentlemen in the Company's 
service. Many stories were told him by the men in 
the Fort that winter — wild tales of the days of rivalry 
and plunder between rival fur-companies and exciting 
stories of the hunt. 

As "is the case with all discerning missionaries. 
Father Lacombe directed his efforts mainly to 
instructing the younger members of his flock. But 
he brouarht some adults into the Christian faith even 



52 FATHER LACOMBE 1853 

in his first season, and in one instance the conversion 
made a stir. 

The bully of Fort Edmonton at that period was a 
Metis named Paulet Paul, a huge, wild, dark fellow 
noted as a fighter. On Father Lacombe's arrival 
Paulet treated the young priest with vaunted indiffer- 
ence, something, too, of the Indian contempt for a 
youth who had not yet won a name or recognition. 
But by degrees he condescended to smoke a pipe with 
him and other rugged Metis who visited the mission- 
ary. 

At the beginning of Lent he dropped into Father 
Lacombe's little house suddenly one evening and asked 
to be made a Christian. Every day then for weeks 
he received especial instruction preparatory to his re- 
ception. A week before the feast he told Father La- 
combe he was going to fast until Easter, but as he 
was working hard daily and absolutely the only food 
the men had then was dried meat and fish, Father 
Lacombe advised him not to limit his rations. But 
the converted bully persisted. 

On Good Friday he looked so weak that Father La- 
combe protested he was making himself ill. His sym- 
pathy was brushed aside by Paulet: 

"No, I only fast ; I will not eat nor drink until Sun- 
day." 

This was the penance Paulet had imposed upon 
himself for past sins; no sacrifice of an extra bite 
or special dainty, but a fast as entire as that of a man 



186S FATHER LACOMBE 58 

lost in a desert. He maintained this until Sunday. 
On that day Paulet was given a seat alone near the 
altar. Chief Factor Rowand and his daughter Ade- 
laide sat near him and were liis sponsors in baptism. 

Paulet as a Christian was an improvement upon 
Paulet the bully, and the Factor noted it. Conse- 
quently toward the close of the following winter when 
Rowand sent a small party of men with dog-trains of 
goods out to meet an Indian band on the plains to 
trade for dried meat and furs Paulet was for once 
permitted to go in charge : as he very much desired. 

Father Lacombe, then established at Ste. Anne, 
happened to be at the Fort on the day of their return. 
Paulet's companions came in without him, and one 
explained eagerly to the priest that his protege had 
made a fool of himself. 

"Paulet," said this Metis, "has made lots of mis- 
chief out there with the Indians. The Indians said 
he put too much water into the rum, but he gave big- 
presents of goods. He made a great man of Paulet 
at last — but he got poor bargains for the Company." 

"Hein" thought Father Lacombe, "there is trouble 
ahead." He knew Rowand. 

This is what he tells of the outcome in his own 
picturesque "English of the Nor'-West." 

"By and bye I met Rowand, and he say to me blus- 
tering — 'Well, that man of yours, that Paulet you 
baptize last year and recommend to me as a good man, 
he made a damfool of himself.' 



64. FATHER LACOMBE 1853 

"I answer nothing: I do not know what to say. 
But I watch out by the river until I see Paulet come 
with his toboggan and dog. 

'"Hey, Paulet,' I say, 'what have you done? 
Rowand will make trouble for you.' 

"He speak bravely — 'Ha! that is aU humbug that 
the men say. You wiU see.' 

"But the big fellow look afraid. Then — quick! an 
idea came to me. 

" 'Paulet,' I say,. 'I know what to do. You will 
go to Rowand and right at once you wiU ask him 
for his blessing as a god- father. (That is a fashion 
of the Metis on great occasions.) Go!' 

"And I laugh as I remember what Rowand said, 
and I hurried to be with him when Paulet comes. 
By-and-by while I was walking up and down with 
him in the great Hall of the Big House, we hear 
somebody at the door. Suddenly Paulet came in and 
at once fell on his knees to Rowand. 

" 'My god-father,' he pray, 'give me your blessing.' 

"Now Rowand was look surprise and shy, for 
though he consent when I coax him to be Paulet's 
god-father, he was not a very religious man. . . . 
At last he say, 'Here is the Father; ask his blessing.' 

"I was trying not to laugh, but I get voice to say, 

" 'No, no ; this is not my affair. It is yours. He 
is not my god-child — give him your blessing.' 

"Now, John Rowand had a good heart behind his 
temper, and he could enjoy Paulet's finesse. . . . 
So he made some kind of a blessing — and he finish it 



1853 FATHER LACOMBE 55 

off by going to the cupboard to get a drink of rum 
for Paulet!" 

Father Lacombe to his latest years loved to dwell 
upon the memory of this man — "He was not big; in 
fae' he was very short, but he was brave, that little 
man, you know — brave like a lion. He feared no 
man; not even a whole tribe of Indians could make 
him afraid." 

"All! he was a grand little man." 

The camp-fires of the Saskatchewan still hear the 
echoes of that tribute. 

Just once his anger fell on Father Lacombe, and 
the latter found it less easy than in Paulet's case to 
turn off the wrath of this little Napoleon of the 
North. The first winter he spent at Ste. Anne he 
found a couple of muskrat skins at the mission left 
by an Indian, as they had been trapped out of season 
and were consequently of little value as fur for trad- 
ing. For this reason Father Lacombe felt their use 
would be no infringement upon the Company's rigid 
command that no emploj^e or other white man allowed 
in the country should trap furs or get them in trade 
for any other purpose than the Company's benefit. 

Father Lacombe took the skins to the wife of the 
half-breed servant at the Mission and had her dress 
the skin and sew strips of it on the collar and cuffs 
of his overcoat to protect him from the cold. One 
day, entering the Big House at Edmonton, he went 
at once to greet his friend the Chief Factor in his 
oflBce. 



56 FATHER LACOMBE 1863 

Rowand, at the first glimpse of the priest and his 
fur-trimmed coat, grew furious. Without replying 
to the genial greeting he bellowed at him, 

"What! you priest, you! You say you have come 
here to teach what is right. . . . And this is the 
way you give the example ! Who gave you the right 
to wear that fur?" 

He had given the astonished yovmg priest no chance 
to make explanations; the latter gave hinx no time to 
withdraw his hasty speech. 

"I tore off those miserable skins from my wrists," 
he says, "and I flung them in his face." 

Then he wheeled about and left the room . . . 
but not before he had learned what Rowand meant 
when he said, "It is true we know only two powers — 
God and the Company!" One only marvels at the 
facihty with which they made the laws of God con- 
form to those of the Company. 

"This incident," wrote Father Lacombe in his 
Memoirs, "hke many others our missionaries experi- 
enced, evidences the spirit of the Company — noble, 
loved, hberal and kind to us, just in as far as the ques- 
tion of fur-trading did not enter into the game. So 
for the sake of our missionary work we had to be very 
prudent and watchful to do nothing that would com- 
promise our interests. 

"We had to suffer with patience and endure for 
the moment what we could not prevent, however un- 
just the affair might appear. The first missionaries 
were exceedingly poor and had little assistance from 



1853 FATHER LACOMBE 57 

their superiors, who for their part had few resources 
at their disposition. The Society of the Propagation 
of the Faith was far from being able to assist us then 
as it did later ; moreover our means of transport were 
practically nil. We depended entirely upon the 
good-will of this good Company to go from one post 
to another and to convey thither our "small luggage. 

"The chief officers, few of whom were Catholic, 
sometimes looked on our arrival and our work with a 
jealous eye. In addition to this they felt that their 
policy was being interfered with — that policy of pre- 
venting the entrance of civilization and of retaining 
the ancien regime. We were received and tolerated, 
but it was because they could not do otherwise. 

"Still," he writes, summing up the memory of those 
years, "considering our position, the conditions of the 
country and the ideas and principles of this Company 
— I venture to say that we have been honorably and 
charitably treated by the Company." 

And elsewhere he writes: "I repeat what I have 
said many times, that if we had not had the aid and 
the hospitality of the Hudson's Bay Company, we 
could not have for a long time begun or carried out 
the establishment of the young Church of the North- 
west." He makes particular reference to the debt 
of gratitude he personally owes to his first friend in 
the Company, John Rowand, to William Christie 
and Richard Hardisty. 

From this it will be seen that Father Lacombe and 
his fellow-workers understood clearly the terms on 



58 FATHER LACOMBE 1853 

which they were privileged to enter the country by 
its masters, the Gentlemen Adventurers. They were 
welcomed — sometimes only tolerated — because they 
did not go in as money-makers, but as ministers of 
the Gospel, intent upon laying the first foundations 
of a moral civilization. Nor did they dare discuss the 
ethics of the fur-trade or the attitude of the traders 
to the Indians. This last, however, was ordinarily 
very kind. 

Father Lacombe had an instance of this as his first 
winter in Edmonton House drew to a close. An 
Indian woman hailing from the plains with her peo- 
ple came to him mourning that her husband had died 
during the winter-hunt, that she had little or no fur 
and her husband owed a large debt to the Company. 
She had only a few ponies to meet this debt and she 
asked Father Lacombe to speak for herself and her 
children to the Chief Factor. 

He went to Rowand and the latter turned over his 
books. The debt was close on to 3,000 skins — ^beaver- 
skins, not dollars or pounds sterling, being the cur- 
rency of this fur-trader's land. 

"Now, who will pay that?" demanded Rowand of 
the priest with mock fierceness. "Bien, hurrah! 
. . ." and he ran his quill pen through the account. 

The honourable Company of the Gentlemen Ad- 
venturers of England trading into the Hudson's Bay 
could not hold a mortgage upon the future of a poor 
widow and her children! 



VI 

March blew a reveille over the bleak hills, waking 
the rivers to music and stirring the myriad forces of 
the woods. The Indians began to come in from the 
winter-hunt, Father Lacombe looking on with lively 
interest at this newest phase of life in the Far West. 

The Strongwood and Plains Crees traded at 
Edmonton House all the year round, but once or 
twice a year in spring or autumn the Blackfeet and 
their Blood and Piegan allies came to trade in large 
numbers : they rarely travelled in small bands in their 
enemies' country. 

When they came riding up to the Fort their bar- 
baric cavalcades were always picturesque. Half- 
naked supple bronze warriors rode by starthngly 
painted, bearing skin shields on their arms, full 
quivers at their sides, and eagle-feathers in their hair. 
Rugged squaws with trains of lively children kept 
ward over the primitive lodge-equipment tied by 
thongs to the travoix behind their ponies. Iron ket- 
tles jangled and the mongrel half- fed dogs made a 
running, yelping accompaniment to the whole. 

This they were when near at hand and analyzed, 

but seen winding down the bridle-trail in the ravine 

on the south bank, with the sun glittering on their 

brass ornaments and the small j9[ags of the chiefs flut- 

59 



60 FATHER LACOMBE 1863 

tering peace signals in the van — ^the Blackfeet com- 
ing to trade at Fort Edmonton offered the most 
picturesque panorama of human life in the west. 

While the warriors turned their ponies loose on the 
meadows about the Fort and strode about among their 
brethren, and their chiefs brought gifts and parleyed 
with the Chief Factor, their dusky womenkind were 
at work — and a town of smoky lodges was springing 
up magically on the hill and meadows near the Fort. 
Then trading began. In those days the Company 
still employed rum in their trading, and they sur- 
rounded their dealings with precautions sprung from 
the experience of savages inflamed with liquor. 

So although the chiefs and their gifts of robes and 
pemmican were received in the Indian Hall by Row- 
and, the trading was accomplished through a grating 
between the Indian Hall and the trading-shop. On 
the shelves but little goods were displayed — on the 
principle that the Indian would not want what he 
could not see. All the gates of the Fort were closed, 
except one to the Indian Hall. At times even 
this was closed and the trading done through a grat- 
ing in the gate. 

First the Indians demanded rum, and it was given 
to them — rum of the first quality carefully diluted 
with water. The Blackfeet being fiercer than the 
Crees received a weaker cup or keg, for the standard 
of mixing in those days defined seven parts of water 
to one of rum for Blackfeet and only three parts 
water to one of rum for the Crees. 



1853 FATHER LACOMBE 61 

After a goodly exchange of peltry for liquor the 
orgies began, as described in earlier days by Father 
Thibault. In 1852 they had in no way altered, and 
Father Lacombe was the witness of frightful scenes 
"which I deplored but could in no way prevent." 
Meanwhile there were men stationed with loaded 
muskets in the sentinel's gallery that surrounded the 
palisade, and the cannon in the bastions stood ready 
for action. These precautions were rigidly preserved 
when the Blackf eet came to trade, for they had burned 
down the Old Bow Fort in John Rowand's time and 
killed white men on several occasions. 

When the snow had quite disappeared and the 
renewed delights of spring tempted him afield. Father 
Lacombe took many long walks through the valley. 
On one of these excursions he came upon the cross 
that had been planted there with so much solemnity 
by Father Demers and Father Blanchet in 1838.^ 
The cross lay on the top of the hill close to the Fort. 
Father Lacombe hfted it up from the ground and 
replanted it firmly, so that for some years it again 
lifted its arms of appeal. 

He decided now to make his headquarters at Lac 
Ste. Anne, as his predecessors had done; meanwhile 
arranging for frequent visits to Edmonton. 

Lac Ste. Anne, fifty miles northwest of Edmon- 
ton, was the first permanent mission for Crees and 

1 The new Parliament Buildings at Edmonton are built directly over 
the site of the old Cross erected here by Father Demers and his com- 
panion on their way to the Pacific in 1838. 



63 FATHER LACOMBE 1854 

Cree-Metis established by Father Thibault on the 
Upper Saskatchewan. He had selected this place 
in 1842 because the soil and fishing were good and 
there was an abundance of fuel. Being remote from 
the Blackfoot trail to the Fort, there was a fiirther 
advantage in security from these traditional enemies 
of the Crees. 

Early in the autumn word came that another 
Oblate, Pere Remas, had been assigned to the mis- 
sion at Lac la Biche. father Lacombe set out on 
horseback with Alexis to visit the newcomer. The 
lake was almost 200 miles away across country, but 
the riding-trails were good, and this journey through 
the woods was only a delight for him. 

At Lac la Biche he found the Indians were absent 
hunting while Father Remas was altogether miser- 
able. He had arrived too late to make a garden, and 
was consequently in an impoverished state. Father 
Lacombe, distressed at his condition, insisted that he 
should return home with him and await the promised 
pastoral visit of Bishop Tache. 

The latter set out from his episcopal hut at He a 
la Crosse in February, 1854. The ceremonial recep- 
tion Rowand planned for him at Edmonton was pre- 
vented by his arrival very late at night on March 22, 
but the next morning he was aroused by the cannons' 
thunder of welcome. 

This was the first visit of a Bishop to Edmonton 
House, and during the week of the visitor's stay the 
Fort was in as nearly holiday mood as a strong- 



1854 FATHER LACOMBE 63 

hearted disciplinarian like Rowand would permit. 
Personally the Chief Factor and his daughters show- 
ered kind attentions upon the young prelate. 

Then he was escorted in his dog-cariole to Ste. 
Anne, where for three weeks Father Lacombe played 
the part of host — a role that always came happily to 
his generous nature. At Ste. Anne the three Oblates, 
dwelhng upon the Bishop's recent experiences at 
Fort Pitt, where he was desolated at the debauchery 
of the Indians and INIetis with drink, found a great 
deal of consolation in the conduct of the excellent 
colony at Ste. Anne. 

Yet fifteen years earlier these Metis had been like 
those of Pitt. The contrast made the Bishop resolve 
firmly not only to find more missionaries for perma- 
nent missions, but to use with the various Chief 
Factors and the Governor at Fort Garry every effort 
possible to prevent the trading of hquor to the 
Indians. This soon became the cry of every mission- 
ary in Rupert's Land, but it was only six years later 
that their campaign had effect. 

During the Bishop's visit to Ste. Anne he con- 
firmed 98 Indians and baptized 22 adults, already 
instructed by Father Lacombe, and who gave every 
evidence of a sincere desire to hve in accordance with 
the missionary's teachings. On Easter Monday the 
Bishop took his leave accompanied by the two mis- 
sionaries. 

Father Lacombe, loth to part with his bretlu-en, 
rode on beside them far past the Fort. When he said 



64 FATHER LACOMBE 1865 

adieu it was with heavy hearts they saw the boyish 
figure turn his cayuse on the woodland path, and 
take his soKtary way back to Ste. Anne. 

While Father Laeombe returned to his own post 
Bishop Tache journeyed on to Father Remas' log- 
shack. It was a miserable abode, twelve feet square 
and six high, where he had spent several miserable 
weeks alone in 1853 before Father Laeombe had 
come riding like a Fairy Benevolent and carried him 
off to Ste. Anne. 

The seats of the mission were made of stumps of 
trees; its other meagre fittings were in accordance. 
Its cupboard was painfully slim. But here, with one 
year's experience of the west and with a plentiful 
supply of seed for a garden, Father Remas was 
re-installed, and the Bishop rode on. 

In the simimer of 1855 a stir was made in the 
Saskatchewan mission-field by the arrival of new 
workers with consequent changes of position. One 
of the newcomers was Vital Grandin, a handsome 
young Breton priest, a dehcate, fair-haired youth who 
was to become an intimate friend of Father Laeombe 
in later years as well as one of the most striking 
figures among the pioneer missionaries of the west. 

In the late summer of 1855, Father Laeombe made 
his first visit to the Peace River, as Father Bourassa 
had done in 1845 and Father Thibault still earher. 
He went on horseback to the Athabasca near the old 
Fort Assinaboine and then proceeded in a small row- 



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66 FATHER LACOMBE 1856 

boat down that river to the Little Slave and up this 
to Lesser Slave Lake. 

Along the south shore of the lake he came upon 
a large encampment of Crees, drawn there at that 
season doubtless by the hosts of ducks and wavies 
that haunt the lake. Father Lacombe spent several 
days among them before pushing on to the post, where 
he was warmly welcomed by his former teacher, Colin 
Fraser, now in charge of the Company's post here. 

The post was built on the hillside that slopes gently 
up from the lake, with the Indian Hall outside the 
stockade and some distance east of it. 

Colin Fraser supplied his friend with ponies and 
guide to ride to Fort Dunvegan, the Company's 
headquarters on the Peace. It was over 160 miles 
away, along the trappers' trail through the pleasant 
autvmin woods. Bourassa, the officer in charge, 
received Father Lacombe very kindly and every 
opportunity was given him to minister to the em- 
ployes, who, as at Edmonton, were largely French- 
Canadian and Catholic. 

On his return to Ste. Anne he at once entered upon 
his deferred novitiate. 

When the prescribed year of religious seclusion and 
prayer was concluded, he pronounced his vows of pov- 
erty, chastity and obedience, as a member of the 
Oblates of Mary Irmnaculate. 

In September he visited the Indians of Jasper 
House,^ the most interesting of these being a band 

1 Jasper House, which was named after Jasper Hawes, an English. 



1856 FATHER LACOMBE 67 

of Iriquois, descendants of old canoemen from 
Caughnawaga. 

Father Lacombe set out with two pack-horses car- 
rying liis portable chapel and provisions, and saddle- 
ponies for himself and his INIetis guide, Michel 
Nipissing. Fallen timber, creeks and swamps tried 
the horses' strength and the travellers' patience. 

The second afternoon on the trail, as they made 
their way tlirough a haze of smoke, the wind rose and 
there came a crackling like thunder. The guide 
knew what it meant : a forest fire was racing to meet 
them, licking up and snapping the dry spruce and 
fallen timber like so much tinder. 

While they groped their way painfully in search 
of a river the smoke settled down on them like a pall. 

"It is only to die!" IMichel cried. Michel was not 
brave as was the redoubtable Alexis. But Father 
Lacombe cried back to him : 

"Akai! Courage! The river is near. Akame- 



yimo 



They reached its banks, made the horses jump in 
and leaped after them. They threw water over the 
trembling animals and themselves as the flames 
approached and rushed past them. For almost two 
days men and horses stayed in a dugout in the bank, 
while the bush glowed with hot embers of the fire. 

officer in the Hudson's Bay Company who established it early in the 
nineteenth century, was situated on the Athabasca River where it emerges 
from the Rockies. It was visited by Pefe de Smet on his heroic trip as 
Peacemaker in 1845-46, and a summit, six miles west of the Fort, was 
named for him. 



68 FATHER L'ACOMBE 1867 

After two days more of painful travelling, the 
young priest, overcome by fatigue and fever, declared 
he could go no further. They camped on the bank 
of a small stream that evening, and when Father 
Lacombe refused to eat, Michel became greatly dis- 
tressed. His fears were varied and he came to the 
broken man with a quaint plea: 

"My father," he said, "I am afraid you wiU die 
here — ^then what will become of me? People will say 
I have ill-treated you — perhaps killed you. Give 
me a piece of paper that I can show Pere Remas 
to let him know that I have been good to you." 

Father Lacombe gave him the note he wanted, and 
then in turn, frightened by the man's fear, he asked 
Michel in case of his death to bury him under a butte 
of sand near by and go at once to Father Remas with 
the news. Perhaps because in all his healthy young 
life before Father Lacombe had known no illness, 
he was unnecessarily afraid of this. However, it was 
to his own intense surprise that he was able in a 
couple of days to mount his pony and continue the 
journey. After two weeks of ministry with the 
Indians he returned home, the Indians following him 
as he rode out of their camp, firing their guns in 
salute and crying out their farewells. 

That winter an urgent call came to him from the 
Blackfoot nation. These men were absolute pagans, 
whose country was considered wild and unsafe but the 
proud race was now terribly afflicted, their children 
dying off like flies with a mysterious sickness. Some 



1857 FATHER LACOMBE 69 

few of them had met Father Lacombe at Fort 
Edmonton and in their extremitj'^ they begged him 
to come to them. 

This was well into February, 1857. 

Across the river ^ from Edmonton, Father 
Lacombe came upon a sickening spectacle — three 
mangled bodies of Blackfeet, whose feet and hands 
were cut off and hung on trees. 

He sent Alexis back to the Fort for men to bury 
the bodies; then the two resumed their journey, 
sturdily trudging over the snowy plain toward the 
Buffalo Lake. 

1 On the site of Strathcona's business-centre to-day. 



VII 

At dusk the teepees of a Cree encampment rose 
before them near the southern extremity of a small 
lake, and the travellers were taken in and fed. Many 
of the Indians in this camp were catechumens of 
Father Lacombe and warmly attached to him. When 
they heard he was bound for the Blackfoot camp, 
they urged him in every possible way not to go. They 
said the Blackfeet would blame their disease on the 
whites and would either refuse to receive him or might 
kill him. 

Father Lacombe reminded them that he had 
received a prayer for help, and he was not going to 
turn back when fellow-creatures in trouble needed 
him. He and Alexis pushed on, losing their way for 
a while in a snowstorm, but at the end of a couple 
of days they came upon the encampment of the 
Blackfeet. Mindful of the character of these 
Indians, he signalled to them from a short distance. 

"Soon a crowd came around me," he writes of this 
in his Memoirs. "What a scene! Imagine these 
men, women and children — half-naked, although it 
was quite cold weather and their bodies reddened with 
the fever which devoured them. For some minutes 
I did not know what was going to happen. They 
swarmed about me, disputing for my person. Some 
70 



1857 FATHER LACOMBE . 71' 

caught my hands; others my soutane. One tried to 
lift me up toward the sky crying out some prayer 
to the Master of Life for pity." 

The unfortunate savages were crazed with fever 
and fear, and they looked to him, the friend of Ninna- 
stakow, as some great medicine-man to relieve them. 
He released himself from the crowd and entering a 
near-bjr lodge found a stoically silent man, who held 
out to him the dead body of his child. It was the 
last of his family to die. Three other bodies lay 
inside the lodge, and the despairing father weakened 
with disease would not for the moment separate him- 
self from this last child. 

There were about sixty tents in all, and from every 
side the priest's ears were stricken with low moans 
or lamentations. The epidemic he found to be scarlet 
fever of a severe type. It was carrying off scores of 
their people and the Indians were terrified out of 
their habitual bravery by the unseen foe which stalked 
so ruthlessly through the camp. 

The poor young Blackrobe with his small box of 
remedies did everything he could to stem the disease. 
Xight and day he passed through their tents, con- 
soling and tending them, but at the thought of how 
little he could do, his warm young nature was in a 
torment of rebellion only second to their own. 

There were several camps to visit, all a few miles 
apart on the snowy plains, and he had spent twenty 
tireless days among them, when he was himself 
stricken with the disease. 



72 FATHER LACOMBE 1857 

His remedies were gone and he felt himself con- 
sumed with the fever. He reconciled himself to this 
inglorious end of the years of work planned for him- 
self, but in a few days, to his own and Alexis' great 
joy, he began to recover. 

The epidemic had now about spent itself, and on 
his recovery he arranged for the burial of all the dead 
Indians. Because of the frozen ground, the Indians 
could not dig graves, as he would have preferred 
them to do, nor did the exhausted warriors build their 
usual burial platforms and expose the bodies to the 
pure elements. They simply gathered the dead bodies 
together in skin lodges — ^ten or fifteen in each lodge — 
and then covered the remains with stones and snow. 

The work of Father Lacombe's mission in 1858 
and 1859 has been concisely pictured in this sentence 
from Bishop Tache's "Twenty Years of Missions". 
. . . "At Lac Ste. Anne Father Remas and 
Father Lacombe multiplied themselves to advance 
the reign of Christ." 

Their days were divided between work in the fields 
and their ministry to the Metis and Indians in and 
about the mission. It was a peaceful, uneventful 
period, in which from day to day the simple-hearted, 
affectionate children of the forest gathered about the 
priests for instruction, or less willingly exerted them- 
selves with shovel and hoe to work under direction 
in the barley and turnip or potato fields about their 
homes. 

One evening early in Januaiy, 1858, when the 



1858 FATHER LACOMBE 73 

little woodland settlement of about forty-five houses 
was intent upon its evening meal and the ruddy fire- 
glow just tinted the opaqueness of its parchment win- 
dows a ]\Ietis came on foot to the mission from the 
Fort. In answer to the inevitable greeting — "What 
news?" — he replied that a strange Avhite man, a 
Doctor, had arrived at the Fort a couple of daj^s 
before the A"ew Year. 

The Doctor, he said, was one of a large party sent 
by the great Queen ISIother across the sea to report 
on the west and her children there. 

The half-breed had other gossip of the Fort, but 
the first news overshadowed all the rest. For the 
poor young Father Frain, who had arrived from 
France a few months before, had been ailing contin- 
ually since his arrival, and the opportunity of con- 
sulting a physician seemed providential. Next 
morning Father Lacombe got out his toboggan- 
cariole and dogs to take him to the Fort. 

Father Frain was well wrapped in buffalo robes 
and then with a "Marche; Hourrah!" from their 
robust, leather-clad master the dogs made off. It 
was fifty miles to the Fort through the woods. That 
evening after dusk had fallen and the big gates of 
the Fort were closed the watcliman heard a vigorous 
pounding on the main gates — Father Lacombe and 
his invalid waited outside. 

Dr. James Hector of the Palliser Expedition — 
for he was the newcomer — was called to attend the 
sick priest. jNIr. Swanston hospitably assigned a 



'T* FATHER LACOMBE 1858 

room to Father Frain. The Doctor did what he 
could for him, but the improvement was sHght, It 
was the country and the diet that were kiUing the 
young man. They decided to send him down to the 
Red River — and thence to Louisiana in sunnier 
cHmes. 

About the middle of February Dr. Hector went 
out to Ste. Anne to secure half-breeds there for the 
Expedition's journey in the coming summer. He 
spent Sunday with Father Lacombe, whom he char- 
acterizes in his official reports as most genial and 
hospitable. During this winter and in the following 
year Father Lacombe met the Doctor (later Sir 
James Hector of New Zealand) several times, and 
his relations with him and the botanist, M. Bourgeau, 
were very pleasant. 

The latter whiled away some time during the 
tedious winter days in carving wooden candlesticks 
for the altar in the Fort chapel. 

Judging from a portion of his report to the Gov- 
ernment, Dr. Hector and his companions were im- 
pressed with the prowess of Father Lacombe's prized 
dog-train and his man Alexis, for Hector wrote: 

"M. Le Combe, the Roman Catholic priest, has 
frequently been driven from Lac Ste. Anne to the 
Fort in a dog-cariole — 50 miles : after which his man 
Alexis, one of the best runners in the country, loaded 
the sled with 400 pounds of meat and returned to 
the misison before next morning!" 

Affairs, spiritual and temporal, prospered with 



1859 FATHER LACOMBE 75 

our pioneer in 1859. His regular ministry lay 
largely with the freemen and Metis, but the Indians 
came to him for direction in increasing numbers. 
Their conduct was in general very good and in accord- 
ance with their new belief. Sometimes he found his 
little chapel at Ste. Anne too small for the devout 
Christians who gathered there, and on the whole the 
mission at the Christianized Devil's Lake was satis- 
fying. 

A pleasant picture of life at Ste. Anne this year 
is given by Lord Southesk in his book of western 
travel. When he reached Fort Edmonton in August 
he found the Company's servants at work harvesting 
wheat on the eastern meadows below the fort. On 
August 19 he set out with a pack-train bound for the 
mountains. The following morning Father Lacombe, 
busy at some repairs in his chapel, was called out 
to welcome a stranger. 

"A fine looking man — ^tall — a gentleman" was 
Southesk, as Father Lacombe recalls him; while in 
his book the English traveller says he met with a 
most cordial reception here and had the pleasure of 
dining with "Peres Lacombe and Le Frain at the 
Roman Catholic mission-house." — "Agreeable men 
and perfect gentlemen," he notes in his diary that 
they are, and comments that Rome has an advantage 
in the class of men she assigns to her missions, as she 
always sends out "polished, highly-educated gentle- 
men." 

"On the pressing invitation of my kind host," 



76 FATHER LACOMBE 1859 

writes Lord Southesk, "I remained for the night at 
the mission-house. Everything there is wonderfully 
neat and flourishing: it is a true oasis in the desert — 
the cows fat and fine, the horses the same, the dogs, 
the very cats the same. A well-arranged and well- 
kept garden, gay with many flowers (some of them 
the commonest flowers of the woods and plains 
brought to perfection by care and labour ) . 

"The house beautifully clean: meals served up as 
in a gentleman's dining-room. Excellent preserves 
of service-berries and wild raspberries — everything 
made use of and turned to account. Surrounded by 
such comfort and refinement and in the society of 
such agreeable entertainers I passed a most pleasant 
evening, one that often recalled itself to my memory 
amidst the experiences of later times." 

He found the walls of the rooms decorated with 
religious pictures, while the home-made book shelves 
held a goodly library of books of a philosophical and 
theological character. Southesk wanted to buy 
horses for his journey in order to push on more 
quickly and set his fancy on a black colt at the mis- 
sion. Being a gift to Father Lacombe from some 
Indians in return for special kindness shown them, 
the priest would not part with it. 

Still Pere Lacombe, he adds, was anxious to oblige 
him, so he looked up two very good horses for which 
Southesk paid £19 each. At the same time the mis- 
sionary made his guest a present of a sack of pemmi- 



1860 FATHER LACOMBE 77 

can, a valuable gift in those days and particularly 
that year. 

"I felt quite sorry to leave Ste. Anne," the courtly 
Southesk writes; "all was so kindly and pleasant at 
the mission. The good fathers loaded us with pro- 
visions — fish, potatoes, dried meat, etc. God bless 
them and prosper their mission." 

From this it would seem that Pere Lacombe at 
thirty-three was charming socially and as open-handed 
and impulsively generous as at eighty-three. 

Lord Southesk did not forget his agreeable host. 
In New York, on the point of sailing for England, 
he despatched to the missionary a long letter and 
small brass lock for the home-made cabinet on which 
the Earl found the young priest at work on his 
arrival. 

In his book Southesk makes no mention of Father 
Remas, for the latter was absent then at St. Boni- 
face. He had gone with a brigade of carts to meet 
three Grey Nuns from Montreal, who were to open 
a home that would be at once a boarding-school, 
orphanage, hospital and refuge for the aged. 

Father Lacombe's active mind seized upon a hun- 
dred details of work for the Indians which could be 
better accomplished by the nuns than by himself. So 
he was overjoyed to welcome them. 

The pastoral \'isit of the Bishop shortly before 
Christmas was the outstanding event of 1860. The 
memory of these pastoral visits of Bishop Tache could 



78 FATHER LACOMBE 1860 

warm Father Lacombe's heart decades afterward: 
it is readily understood that the pleasure at the mo- 
ment was indescribable. For Bishop Tache — young, 
brilliant, and spiritually zealous — was like Father 
Lacombe himself a man of great heart and of strong 
social charm. He was a brilliant raconteur, and a 
warmly sympathetic friend. 

An unexpected meeting with him one day on the 
road from Lac la Biche made the forest-trail a porch 
to Paradise for Father Lacombe. He promptly 
turned his dogs about and the three arrived at Ste. 
Anne at eight o'clock at night, as everyone was about 
to retire. 

"Our arrival, quite unexpectedly, especially at that 
hour, turned everything upside down," writes Father 
Lacombe in the Memoirs. "They rushed to the 
chapel — everyone rushed there — the Fathers, the Sis- 
ters and the Christians living about us. They were 
so agitated and surprised that they sang everything 
that came into their heads. And Father Remas — 
ah, that dear old Father! only foimd himself as the 
Te Deum was being chanted, and so at the end joined 
his voice in the grand fete. What harmony!" he 
concludes with a touch of laughing sarcasm. 

For days this little mission lost in the woods was 
like a dovecote in a flutter of delight. The three 
Grey Nuns were gladdened like children by the mes- 
sages from their Sisters at St. Boniface and letters 
from the home-folk in Quebec. The priests rejoiced 



1860 FATHER LACOMBE 79 

openly in the presence of their brilliant and humor- 
ous brother. 

The Indian children of the school and the old peo- 
ple who had never beheld a bishop before, regarded 
him with awe; while the Metis couple, Michel and 
his wife, were more than ever important since they 
had a bishop to cook for. 

To Father Lacombe fell the task of secretly con- 
triving a crozier for the bishop, when it was found 
that he had brought none with him : it was not a con- 
venient thing to pack in canoes or dog-carioles. With 
an Indian hunting-knife Father Lacombe fashioned 
one of greenwood and tinted it with yellow ochre. 

The Bishop carried it with dignity at the midnight 
Mass, remarking that this was a pastoral staff as 
primitive as the shepherds carried on the Great Night ! 
The motley congregation was impressed, and for 
years after the wondrously-tinted staff had a place 
over the rafters at Ste. Anne, where it was the sub- 
ject of many tender and laughing reminiscences. 

Before Bishop Tache went away a very important 
step was taken by him in conjunction with Father 
Lacombe. Lac Ste. Anne mission, as we have seen, 
was established by Father Thibault mainly for the 
Crees, because it was remote from the Blackfoot trail 
to Fort Edmonton. 

But since the visit of Father Lacombe to the 
Blackfeet during the epidemic that race had been 
hankering for a share of the magnetic Httle man's 



80 FATHER LACOMBE 1860 

attentions; while he felt the time had come when he 
should turn to this neglected people. 

Consequently, one day at Lac Ste. Anne a Black- 
foot chief, attired in savage splendour, sought an 
audience with the bishop. In the name of his tribe 
he asked that a priest should be sent among his peo- 
ple. The chief promised that the missionary would 
be unmolested, and that, while he was with them, they 
would not make war on their Cree enemies. 

He wanted the priest to carry a white flag bearing 
a Red Cross as a sign easily recognized and to be 
respected by all. (This proviso is quite obviously 
the result of Father Lacombe's conferences with the 
chief and his people.) The interview caused the 
bishop to decide upon what Father Lacombe had 
been urging for some time — the foundation of 
another mission nearer the Fort, where the Blackfeet 
could be assembled from time to time. 

There was still another reason influencing the 
bishop. Each year increasing numbers of Metis 
were abandoning their nomad-life to settle about the 
mission and learn to farm. Father Lacombe in his 
numerous excursions through the country had seen 
many places with better soil than that about the lake; 
where also there were no muskegs to trap unwary 
cattle in spring. 

Consequently during the bishop's visit it was ar- 
ranged the two should visit these points. 

They made long trips into the country by dog- 
train and snowshoes. One day, they reached a fine 



1860 FATHER LACOMBE 81 

hill overlooking the Sturgeon valley, where that 
pretty river winds on itself in many curves and Big 
Lake gleams in the distance. The prospect at once 
held the bishop's attention. 



VIII 

Standing on this hill-top, where Father Lacombe 
had so often paused to rest his dog-train, the two 
pioneers made a halt. They surveyed the broad 
valley intently, refreshing themselves with a choice 
morsel of pemmican as they did so. The Bishop 
finally turned from his survey and said: 

"Mon Pere, the site is indeed magnificent. I 
choose it for the new mission, and I want it to be 
called St. Albert, in honour of your patron." 

Father Lacombe acquiesced in this order, which 
was, he confesses, quite agreeable to him. Then the 
bishop planted his staff in the snow where they stood, 
saying: 

"Here you will build the chapel!" 

And on the exact spot where the staff had been 
planted, Father Lacombe a few months later erected 
the altar of the mission chapel. 

Friends of Father Lacombe — aware of his intui- 
tive knowledge of human nature and the subtle 
diplomacy hidden under his most naive and simple 
plainsman's exterior — ^will gather from this incident, 
as on numerous other occasions with Indians and 
whites, that Father Lacombe had his companion do 
exactly what he wanted him to do. . . . And all 



1861 FATHER LACOMBE 88 

the while the bishop felt he was the prime mover in 
it aU! 

It was now 1861, and Ste. Anne mission had 
arrived at a period where life meant a peaceful round 
of work. This was not what the ardent nature of 
Father Lacombe desired. He turned with eagerness 
in the springtime to the building of the new mission. 
Father Remas was preparing then to go up to Jasper 
House to hold missions for the Indians there. Father 
Caer, who had come in the previous summer to replace 
Father Frain, was to go to the prairies with the 
hunters for four months. Ste. Anne was almost 
deserted by pastors and flock. 

The snow had melted from the face of our good old 
Mother, as some of his Indians called the Earth, when 
Father Lacombe got ponies, oxen and farm imple- 
ments together, and with the devoted Normand 
couple for servants made his way to the big hill by 
the Sturgeon. They pitched their skin tents on the 
summit of "la chere colline." After Mass on the fol- 
lowing morning Father Lacombe walked out over 
his new domain, showing its beauties to the apprecia- 
tive Metis couple with all the delights of a landed 
proprietor. 

Early on Monday morning Father Lacombe, 
Michel and two other Metis crossed the river to the 
spruce forest on the opposite hill and began to get 
out logs for the buildings. But before the first stroke 
was put in the trees, the four knelt, as Father 



84 FATHER LACOMBE 1861 

Lacombe directed, and asked the Great Master to 
bless their work. 

Soon the forest rang with the strokes of their axes, 
and Rose — the wife of Michel — in her tent listened 
with delight to the echoes as she boiled the dried meat 
for their noonday meal. 

For ten days the logging continued, one of the 
oxen being employed to haul the logs to the site. A 
saw-pit was made, and logs sawed under the young 
priest's instruction. Meanwhile two of the men were 
employed in clearing and breaking the soil. 

There was only one plough: Father Lacombe was 
anxious to cultivate as great an area as possible; so 
he arranged that one man should plough part of the 
day with two oxen, while the other man with another 
yoke should plough late into the night. This was 
possible because of the long twilight of the Saskatche- 
wan valley. 

Very soon a number of the Ste. Anne Metis and 
freemen turned up at the new mission, preferring it 
to the Slimmer hunt for a novelty. The men began 
to get timber for houses ; the women were set to work 
on a large communal garden where carrots, onions, 
beets, cabbages, turnips and other vegetables were 
sown in abundance. But the ruling-spirit of all this 
activity; now in the saw-pit, now at work on the 
houses, again in the fields — ^was Father Lacombe, 
altogether happy in finding an adequate outlet for 
his energy. 

All through the spring the work progressed. July 



1861 FATHER LACOMBE 85 

came and the fertile grainlands on the hilltop were 
touched with the colour of the harvest. Father 
Lacombe and his regiment of workers were enjoying 
their own potatoes and vegetables. The houses which 
had risen "by enchantment," as the Genius of the 
place declared, would soon be ready for habitation. 
They were quite seemly structures for the period and 
the place, all being fitted with floors and doors and 
windows, as well as shingles on the roofs made by 
the Genius and his zealous helpers. 

Autumn came — the incomparable golden autumn 
of the western prairies, and the harvests were reaped 
and stacked, golden tents on the stripped fields. The 
vegetables were covered away in root-cellars on the 
side of the hill. The grain that had not properly 
mature^d was stacked for feed for the cattle and pigs, 
while the rest was threshed and brought to the Com- 
pany's grist-mill at Fort Edmonton. 

Alexis and some noted hunters went out to the 
plains for buffalo : others at the mission brought home 
each night tempting stores of wild ducks from the 
marshy ponds fringing the Lake. . . . "Qu'il 
etiat delicieux pour les Metis comme pour Vlndien, 
ce temps de I' Age d'Or, quand la chasse etiat encore 
abondante!" Father Lacombe writes rapturously. 
. . . "How full of delights for the Metis as for 
the Indian, this Golden Age when the Hunt was still 
abundant!" 

By this time twenty Metis families had been 
attracted to St. Albert, and were working on their 



86 FATHER LACOMBE 1868 

houses or lodges for the winter. . . . And with 
all this the heart of Father Lacombe was very glad. 

In September a young traveller was carried into 
the mission terribly wounded by the accidental dis- 
charge of his gun. Father Lacombe put him in his 
own bed, where he and Michel did everything they 
could for him. They dressed his terrible wound, 
mitigating his numbed terror by their sympathy. He 
lingered a couple of weeks. 

The unfortunate youth was from Hamilton, 
Ontario. Father Lacombe never enquired what his 
business in the west had been, and he has long ago 
forgotten his name, but at the time he wrote to the 
man's family and received a grateful response from 
them. 

The following year, 1862, Father Lacombe says 
he opened — "with my axe in my hand" — at work on 
buildings for the new mission. In the spring he 
decided there must be a bridge across the Sturgeon 
at the foot of the hiU. The river was greatly swollen 
this season and crossing doubly difficult, yet he held 
to his custom of attending the Fort on every alternate 
Sunday to celebrate Mass. The previous summer 
he had built a small scow or raft, which he used as 
a ferry, swimming his pony across. 

"But I grew so tired of this," he told me once. 
"I say to myself one day — 'I'll make a bridge.' 
Next Sunday after Mass I went outside and called 
aloud : 

" 'My friends, I'm finished to cross that way in the 



1862 FATHER LACOMBE 87 

water walking in the mud on the bank and pushing 
the scow. I'll build me a bridge, and if any of you 
do not help me — that man will not cross on the bridge : 
he will go through the water. Yes, I will have a 
man there to watch.' 

"Next morning that whole settlement came out 
with me. Thej' brought axes, ropes, everything we 
need. I put an old Canadien freeman as supervisor, 
and in three days we had a solid bridge. While they 
worked I fed them all, with pemmican and tea." 

For a long time this was known along the Saskat- 
chewan as The Bridge. Lord JMilton and Cheadle 
noted it as the only bridge they had seen in the Hud- 
son's Baj^ Territory. To the inhabitants it was a 
marvel. Like childi'en thej^ crossed and re-crossed 
it scores of times at first simply for the delight and 
novelty of it. 

The bridge built and the convent well advanced. 
Father Lacombe decided he should go over the 
prairies to St. Boniface to report to his bishop and 
bring back the j^early supplies of the missions from 
Outside. At that time it had become necessary to 
pay the Indians and I\Ietis for work. A man's hire 
was one skin a daj% which meant that he must be paid 
in goods to the value of one beaver-skin. 

Anticipating the need of several workmen at the 
new mission, Father Lacombe decided to secure as 
large a supply of goods as possible. To avoid paj^- 
ing the high freight rates of the Company, he organ- 
ized now a brigade of Red River cai'ts — the historical 



88 FATHER LACOMBE 1868 

wooden conveyance of western Canada, which has 
creaked its commonplace way into history as effectu- 
ally as did Boadicea's more brilliant chariot. 

This was the first brigade of carts to cross the 
prairies with freight between Fort Edmonton and 
the Red River. 

The voyage across the prairies was made each way 
in one month, and on his return in August Father 
Lacombe brought with him an Oblate novice, Brother 
Scollen, to open a school for the children at Fort 
Edmonton. This school ' — the first regular school 
to be opened west of Manitoba — was held in a log- 
house within the Fort, and there were twenty pupils, 
the children of the Company's clerks and servants. 

They were not scholars of a conventional type. 
Many of them wore deerskin garments and leggings, 
and carried lumps of pemmican or dried meat in their 
pockets as dainties. At the sound of the voyageurs' 
songs or cheers in autumn, they flew like arrows from 
their bows out to the bank to welcome the brigade 
home. When gunshot signals arose from the south- 
ern bank, they rushed to see what stranger would 
return in the boat sent across from the Fort. They 
were wild as hares. 

This autumn in descending the ladder from a trap- 

1 It is worth recording that only forty-five years later over one hun- 
dred students of the new University of Alberta could look across the 
Saskatchewan at the deserted graj' Fort, from which this school-house 
had long before vanished — and speak of the Fort and all pertaining to 
it as something connected with an age quite remote. ... So quickly 
has this Age made progress in the West! 



1863 FATHER LACOMBE 89 

door in the storehouse loft, Father Lacombe missed 
his footing. The ladder slipped, his load of tools 
fell and instinctively grasping the floor above him, 
the heavy trapdoor crashed down on his hand. He 
called: no one came. . . . 

He grew faint, and in his impatience fearing death 
would result, he fumbled in his pocket for his knife, 
planning to cut his hand off at the wrist. The knife 
was not there. . . . Rallying his strength for one 
desperate effort, he drew liis body up, crashed on the 
door with his head and hand. ... It moved 
slightly — he wrenched his hand out, and fell to the 
floor unconscious. 

Michel and Rose, greatly distressed, found him 
there a little later, still unconscious, and for fifteen 
days his hand was so shockingly bruised he was unable 
to celebrate Mass. 

By the end of this year— 1862— St. Albert had 
assumed an air of pastoral permanence. The fol- 
lowing year opened peacefully enough for the little 
colony. In the spring Father Lacombe sent Father 
Caer with some INIetis to St. Boniface with the carts, 
while he remained at his post — an energizing spirit — 
putting in the grain crops, building a grist-miU and 
completing the shelter for the nmis, while work was 
begun on a larger house for them. 

The past winter had been so hard that the Indians 
and some traders were in a state of semi-starvation 
for months. The Crees and Blackfeet made peace, 
because they needed all their energies for the hunt. 



90 FATHER L'ACOMBE 1863 

Fort Edmonton, in spite of its traditional stores, knew 
the nip of want toward the end of winter, but at St. 
Albert the little colony's store of dried meat was eked 
out with vegetables and grain from the mission-farm 
and fish dried in the autumn. 

The Genius presiding there now became even more 
anxious to assure them a continual supply of food, 
and with this intention he set to work upon a flour-miU 
that he had ordered from St. Boniface with the last 
year's carts. His day-dreams already showed him 
grain-fields yellowed for the harvest and extending 
to all points of "this dear hillside." He gave small 
prizes to the Metis for putting in large crops on their 
own farms, and the system proved effective. 

With the help of an American adventurer, who had 
sought the free hospitality of the mission during the 
winter, Father Lacombe set up the machinery of his 
little mill. It was a vexing task, for neither of the 
amateurs understood their work. With the machin- 
ery once placed, there was more trouble ahead taming 
the Indian ponies to furnish power. 

More strenuously than their human prototypes 
these bronchos resisted the yoke of civilization, the 
drudgery of modern industry. Father Lacombe was 
determined, though. His will, that later proved a 
match for whole Indian tribes, was not to be over- 
come by bronchos. By degrees they were broken in, 
and on occasions when they were simply "furious," 
Father Lacombe resorted to the use of oxen, with a 



1863 FATHER LACOMBE 91 

Metis sitting near to touch them up when they 
lagged. 

Like a verse out of the history of The-House-that- 
Jack-built is the passage written by Father Lacombe 
to a benefactor in Quebec concerning "the wild ponies 
that turn the big wheel that catches the cogs of a 
little wheel, that pulls round the band that sets the 
millstones in motion . . ."to grind the flour for 
the colony of St. Albert. 

"Having neither blacksmiths, nor iron, nor imple- 
ments the supply of power to our invention was often 
interrupted. . . . However, we at last made 
flour — ^to the great admiration of our people." 

This was the first horse-power mill erected on the 
western plains, and it had a somewhat varied course 
not unattended by misfortune. 



IX 

In August of this year, Governor Dallas of the 
Hudson's Bay Company arrived at Fort Edmonton 
on a tour of inspection. 

With Mr. Christie he went riding out to see the 
mission, which had become the one point of interest 
easily accessible to the Fort. Furthermore, Dallas, 
who had come not long before from Oregon, and had 
shared there in the Company's determined opposition- 
to the entry of American settlers, was suspicious of 
Father Lacombe's little colony, where the freemen 
and Metis were giving all their time to farming 
instead of trapping furs as the Company's dividends 
demanded they should. 

His irritation attained its height when he reached 
the Sturgeon. There stood The Bridge! The boast 
of the settlement it might be, but as surely plain evi- 
dence of the intrusion of the white man and his unin- 
vited Progress. Tut! tut! this was enough to make 
any Company man of the old school grow hot. Could 
not the Gentlemen Adventurers have built bridges 
over every stream in the west if they had wanted to 
see them there? And here was this priest building 
one with its invitation to settlers — the thin edge of 
the wedge of civilization being thrust in. 
92 



1863 FATHER LACOMBE 93 

"Have that bridge removed to-morrow," Dallas 
ordered Christie sternly, and the Chief Factor 
assented quietly. At the mission dinner-table, 
where he was regaled with the best of its cream and 
the choicest of its vegetables, the stalwart Governor 
grew hot again, but this time with a sort of admira- 
tion. Emphasizing his remarks with strokes of his 
heavy fist on the little table, he said to Christie : 

"See the thrifty way in which these missioners make 
the most of everything, in spite of their poverty. See 
how with all our resources and our hundreds of serv- 
ants, our Forts are falling to ruin, while these priests 
who come into the countiy with nothing but a little 
book under their arm" — referring to the Breviary 
which Father Lacombe had under his arm — "they are 
performing wonders. 

"Their houses spring up from the ground like 
trees — growing bigger and better all the time; while 
our Forts are tumbling to ruin. Sir, things must be 
improved !" 

Before long things were changed at Fort Edmon- 
ton, but when the old Governor — in whom the sterner 
traditions of the Company seemed embodied — had 
gone on his way again, no hand was lifted at Mr. 
Christie's order against The Bridge. The Factor 
had no intention of working such an injustice upon 
his friend. 

In 1863 Lord ]\Iilton and his travelling companion, 
W. B. Cheadle, visited St. Albert. They had already 
spent one drearj' winter in a log hut built by them- 



94 FATHER LACOMBE 1863 

selves in the vicinity of Fort Carleton. Like most 
people on the plains that season they had known what 
it was to feel hungry. At Fort Edmonton, where 
Richard Hardisty was now in charge during 
Christie's absence, the travellers had to spend some 
time waiting for horses and guides to push on to the 
mountains. 

Meanwhile they visited St. Albert and relate in 
their book of travels: 

"At Lake St. Alban's, about nine miles north of 
the Fort, a colony of freemen — i. e., half-breeds who 
have left the service of the Company — have formed 
a small settlement which is presided over by a Romish 
priest. Some forty miles beyond is the ancient col- 
ony of Lake St. Ann's of similar character, but with 
more numerous inhabitants. 

"Soon after our arrival Mr. Hardisty informed us 
that five grizzly bears had attacked a band of horses 
belonging to the priest of St. Albans and afterwards 
pursued two men who were on horseback — one of 
whom, being very badly mounted, narrowly escaped 
by the stratagem of throwing down his coat and cap, 
which the bears stopped to tear to pieces. The priest 
had arranged to have a grand hunt on the morrow 
and we resolved to join in the sport. 

"We carefully prepared guns and revolvers and at 
daylight next morning drove over with Baptiste to 
St. Alban's. We found a little colony of some 
twenty houses built on the rising ground near a small 
lake and river. A substantial wooden bridge spanned 



1863 FATHER LACOMBE 95 

the latter, the only structure of the kind we had seen 
in the Hudson's Baj'- territory. 

"The priest's house was a pretty white building 
with garden around it and adjoining it the chapel, 
school and nunnery. The worthy . Father, JNI. 
Lacombe, was standing in front of his dwelling as 
we came up, and we at once introduced ourselves and 
inquired about the projected bear-hunt. He wel- 
comed us very cordiallj', and informed us that no day 
had yet been fixed, but that he intended to preach 
a crusade against tlie marauders on the following 
Sunday, when a time should be appointed for the 
half-breeds to assemble for the hunt." 

"Pere Lacombe was an exceedingly intelligent 
man, and we found his society very agreeable. 
Although a French-Canadian he spoke Enghsh very 
fluently and his knowledge of the Cree language was 
acknowledged by the half-breeds to be superior to 
their own. Gladly accepting his invitation to stay 
and dine, we followed him into his house, which con- 
tained only a single room with a sleeping loft above. 

"The furniture consisted of a small table and a 
couple of rough chairs, and the walls were adorned 
with several coloured prints, amongst which were a 
portrait of His Holiness the Pope, another of the 
Bishop of Red River, and a picture representing some 
very substantial and stolid looking angels lifting very 
jolly saints out of the flames of purgatory. 

"After a capital dinner of soup, fish and dried 
meat with delicious vegetables we strolled around the 



96 FATHER LACOMBE 1863 

settlement in company with our host. He showed us 
several very respectable farms, with rich cornfields, 
large bands of horses and herds of cattle. He had 
devoted himself to improving the condition of his 
flock, had brought out at a great expense ploughs and 
other farming implements for their use, and was at 
the present completing a corn-mill to be worked by 
horse-power. 

"He had built a chapel and established schools for 
the half-breed children. The substantial bridge we 
had crossed was the result of his exertions. Alto- 
gether this little settlement was the most flourishing 
community we had seen since leaving Red River, and 
it must be confessed that the Romish Priests far excel 
their Protestant brethren in missionary enterprise 
and influence. 

"They have estabhshed stations at Isle a la Crosse, 
St. Alban's, St. Ann's, and other places, far out of 
the wilds, undeterred by danger or hardship, and 
gathering half-breeds and Indians around them, have 
taught with considerable success the elements of civ- 
ilization as well as religion; while the latter remain 
inert enjoying the ease and comfort of the Red River 
settlement, or at most make an occasional summer's 
visit to some of the nearest Posts." ^ 

1 In this last statement the travellers were rather severe, for al- 
though the Catholic missionaries certainly had gone into the wilder- 
ness in vastly larger numbers than any other, and had worked in 
heroic fashion, there were at that time two missionaries of the Church of 
England in the Mackenzie district, where the first went in 1859; while on 
the Upper Saskatchewan the Rev. Mr. Woolsey, a Wesleyan preacher. 



1863 FATHER LACOMBE 97 

This year with St. iUbert completely hewn out of 
the forest and all matters progressing favourably. 
Father Lacombe felt his old desire to go far out into 
the plains to meet the Blackfeet in their own country. 
Taking his Alexis and a half-breed Kootenai and 
Cree, named Francois, who spoke some Blackfoot, 
he rode forth with plenty of dried meat for provi- 
sions. 

For the first time he carried with him his Red Cross 
flag — a small white pennon about two feet by one 
and a half, with a red Cross emblazoned on it. It 
was the signal agreed upon with the Blackfoot chief 
at Ste. Anne in 1860. The httle party scoured the 
plains due south and southeast of Fort Edmonton, 
but Father Lacombe's time was so occupied with the 
bands of Crees he met first tliat he finally returned 
to the mission without meeting any but one small 
camp of Blackfeet. 

It was during this journey to the prairies that 
Father Lacombe had his famous encounter with the 
Sorcerer and medicine-man, AVhite-Eagle, the ruling 
spirit in a camp of over 300 hostile pagan Crees of 
the plains. 

had succeeded his kindly little predecessor, Mr. Rundle, and had a 
mission at Pigeon Lake. 

In this year, too, the Rev. George MacDougall of the Methodist 
Church came into the Edmonton country. The latter was a man to 
whose useful life and fine character Father Lacombe gladly testifies in 
fraternal charity. He came after Milton and Cheadle's visit, however, 
and they had naturally drawn their conclusions from what they saw; 
meeting zealous French priests at every post and none of any other 
race or creed. 



98 FATHER LACOMBE 186^ 

For days the missionary camped with his Alexis 
within their circle of tepees — unwelcomed, while he 
and his religion were most subtly misrepresented and 
reviled by the medicine-man. To this Father La- 
combe opposed a subtlety and determination that more 
than matched White Eagle, and a dower of the "faith 
that moves mountains." Mounting his pony at dawn 
one day he rode outside the circle of tents holding 
his crucifix high in one hand and his Red Cross flag 
in the other. He raised the Indian chant of Ho-ho- 
ye-hi; then called upon the Indians to rise and hear 
his story, for he would talk to them again. 

The Indians gathered about him again, and tliis 
time White Eagle's arguments were so completely 
overturned that the indignant medicine-man left the 
camp and before long almost the entire camp became 
Christian. 

Father Lacombe returned to St. Albert for the re- 
mainder of the year with occasional visits to Fort 
Edmonton, which under William Christie's sway had 
assumed an improved aspect. 

A house and chapel built for Father Lacombe 
stood just west of the Big House, This was un- 
doubtedly intended not only to please the priest who 
was a warm friend of Christie, but to provide the 
Fort as well with a lightning-rod against the wrath 
of the Blackfeet. 

In the following spring — in 1864^for the first 
time in Father Lacombe's recollection the Blackfeet 
threatened the peace of Fort Edmonton. 




Making a Blacktbot Brave the Ordeal 



1864 FATHER LACOMBE 99 

A large partj' — over seven hundred in all — had 
come in to trade, and were camped for some days on 
the lull beliind tlie Fort. The meadows were ahve 
with ponies, dogs and people, until one day after the 
trading had been concluded the order for departure 
was cried through the encampment — ^much to the re- 
lief of the Gentlemen Traders. 

The lodges were pulled down and bound with 
thongs : the party dropped easily into marching-order, 
a file of hunters winding down the steep path to the 
river which was then low and easily forded. They 
made a picturesque array — ^lusty strong-featured 
bronzed men and women with hthe half -naked bodies 
and faces streaked with vermilion. The leaders wore 
eagle-feathers in their hair : the men were for the most 
part naked but for a buffalo-robe caught around 
them: the women wore decorated tunics of antelope- 
skin or blue cloth and richly beaded gaiters. Men 
and women ahke sat their sure-footed bronchos with 
the ease of the plainsman, their primitive chattels 
fastened to travoix dragged behind the ponies. 

The band had already crossed the Saskatchewan 
and their straggling nimibers were climbing the trail 
up the wooded banks on the south side — ^when the 
trouble began. A Sarcee had lingered behind the 
party, and standing by the Indian Gate near the 
southeast bastion was intent upon a horse deal with 
Flatboat INIcLaine. Joe McDonald and a man 
named Smith stood near helping McLaine in the bar- 
ter. Smith was endeavouring to make a deal for a 



100 FATHER LACOMBE 1864 

bundle of old clothes and a quantity of alcohol in an 
old painkiller bottle. 

With vigorous pantomime he would first let the In- 
dian smell the alcohol, then pointing to the bottle and 
the clothes — magnificently proffer the whole for the 
horse. The Indian dallied: he wanted more — for a 
pony in those days was worth fifty to sixty skins. 
. . . Suddenly a small party of Cree warriors 
slipped around the bastion from the south side : with- 
out warning Little Pine, their leader, emptied his 
rifle into the Sarcee's thighs. 

The Sarcee brave fell forward, mortally wounded, 
blood gushing from mouth and nostrils. McLaine 
seizing the body dragged it to the southeastern gate 
while the Crees made off, firing wild as they went. 
The Sarcee's wife in dumb agony ran to throw her 
arms around the bleedmg body: she was pulled into 
the courtyard by the men, and the gates speedily 
closed by the steward.^ 

Father Lacombe was seated writing in his quarters. 
Startled there by the cry that a Blackfoot had been 
killed he hurried out to find the unfortunate Sarcee 
drenched in blood on the floor of the Indian Hall. 
His squaw crouched beside him moaning piteously^ 

1 Malcolm Groat, the son of Alexander Groat, a popular drill-sergeant 
in Wellington's army in the Peninsular War, was steward of Fort 
Edmonton for several years. He was born in Glasgow and is a de- 
scendant of that Jan Groote who came from Holland early in the 
eighteenth century, and for services rendered had bestowed on him by 
King James II those lands upon which John O'Groat's house came to 
be built. Malcolm Groat came to Edmonton House from Scotland by; 
way of the Hudson's Bay in 1862. 



1864 FATHER LACOMBE 101 

The warrior was not dead, and when his wounds were 
dressed, he was put in the care of Steward Groat 
and carried to a bed of blankets in the latter's 
room. 

His wife stayed with him, crouching beside him like 
a stricken animal, moaning softly with heart-breaking- 
poignancy. Groat called on McLaine to keep him 
company through this vigil, and McLaine — a good- 
hearted rough fellow — essayed to explain to the 
woman by signs that if her husband needed any as- 
sistance through the night she was to call himself and 
Groat. The two men climbed therewith to their 
bunks. 

The well-meant offer only roused the pair to alarm, 
and from soft moans their voices raised to weird 
death-chants and cries, alternating with calls for "La- 
combe!" or "Brazeau!" Groat finally brought the 
interpreter Brazeau and after he had reassured the 
unfortunate pair that no harm was meant to either by 
McLaine, they kept stoically quiet for the rest of 
the night. 

For a couple of days the warrior lingered — then 
died. His body was buried under the trees in the 
Fort burying-ground by the river, and the woman 
laden with gifts was sent back to her own people. 

Some weeks later a war-party of Blackfeet re- 
turned to the Fort. They were met far outside the 
gates by Brazeau, who had enjoyed a reputation 
among them for fearlessness since his Missouri days. 
He conducted the cliiefs to the Indian Hall, where 



102 FATHER LACOMBE 1864- 

Christie and Father Lacombe smoked the calumet 
with them and sent them home laden with gifts. 

About July of this year Dr. Rae, the explorer, 
passed through Fort Edmonton on his way to British 
Columbia. As all travellers did at the time, when 
they had heard of the little Utopia north of the Fort, 
he went out to see it and its founder. 

"Ah, my crops were fine. The place — it looked 
■ — ^yes, heavenly!" Father Lacombe recalls with en- 
thusiasm. "And Dr. Rae, he was astonished, he say 
to me, to see such grain. 

"At this time Alexis, mon fameux Alexis, had some 
growth on his hand, big as a bird's egg and soft, and 
the pain burned him. When Dr. Rae came out to us 
— like a Providence — I had him look at it, but Alexis 
said he was afraid to have anything done for it. I 
said to Rae, 'When I talk to Alexis and he is turn 
from you — cut it quick with your lance!' — He did, 
and it cured the hand. My poor Alexis!" 

The crops that year were particularly good, and 
Father Lacombe, anticipating plenty of work for his 
mill, tried to improve it. With the Brother Bowes 
he built a dam on the Sturgeon to provide power. In 
June a steady downpour of rain made the lake and 
rivers rise; small creeks swelled to the size of young 
rivers ; the dam was threatened with destruction. 

Fearing the worst Father Lacombe got on his 
horse and galloped round the settlement calling on his 
people to come and help him. They hung lanterns 
in the trees by the riverside and all night worked un- 



1864 FATHER LACOMBE 103 

der his direction digging a canal at the bend above 
the mill-dam. The water was diverted from its 
regular course, pressure on the dam was relieved 
and that precious bit of frontier workmanship 
saved. 

A surprise was now in store for Father Laeombe. 
Shortly before the brigade returned from Norway 
House Richard Hardisty, the young trader at Rocky 
INIountain House, had been down to the Red River. 
He brought back word to Father Laeombe that a 
brother of his was coming up by boat. A few days 
later as the newcomer, a slim youth of eighteen, rode 
out to the mission the two met on the St. Albert 
trail. 

Gaspard Laeombe was a straight, self-reliant 
youth, less emotional than the missionary, yet resem- 
bling him strangely in face and figure. The lure of 
the open trail, that in Albert Laeombe had been over- 
come by his studies and ambitions, had conquered 
Gaspard. Suddenly leaving school at fourteen he 
set out roaming with a young man down through 
Virginia and Kentucky and back again through Ohio 
to Ontario — working his way as he went. 

He returned home. To please his family he held 
a clerkship in Montreal for eighteen months. The 
wanderlust again seized him and off he went to Al- 
bany. Here a letter came from his mother, enclosing 
one from Father Laeombe, in which he alluded to 
American miners who had made their first find of 
Saskatchewan gold. 



104 FATHER LACOMBE 1864 

Within five hours Gaspard was on board a train 
for St. Paul. 

The next summer he surprised Richard Hardisty at 
Fort Garry by asking to be taken to Edmonton 
House. 

"But, you little fellow," the Edmonton man pro- 
tested, "your brother will be vexed if I take you away 
back there!" 

Gaspard, not unlike his brother in his determina- 
tion, finally had his way, and as we have seen arrived 
at St. Albert. 

Shortly after his arrival Gaspard Lacombe accom- 
panied his brother out to Beaver Hills, where a big 
encampment of Crees were driving buffalo into 
pounds to slaughter them. 

"Ah learned then," says Gaspard in his soft 
Southern accents, "what the Sisters meant when they 
wahned me that Father Lacombe gave everything 
away. Ma dear! the first day he gave away ma red 
flannel shirt — the only one Ah had in ma sack — ^be- 
cause he had nothing himself but what he wore. 
. . . Heu! the vermin and cold were so bad Ah 
only stayed three days in the camp ; some half-breeds 
passed bound for St. Albert. I joined them — Ah'd 
have left sooner if I could!" 

From Beaver HiUs Father Lacombe went to 
Rocky Mountain House to instruct a party of Black- 
feet. One morning outside the gates he was hailed by 
a weary party ^ of American miners, half -famished 

1 Jimmy Gibbons, who recalled these details for me at Edmonton in 



1864 FATHER LACOMBE 105 

and footsore. They had lived on horseflesh from the 
Devil's Lake to the Red River, where the Blackfeet 
had stolen all the rest of their horses. A fresh travoix 
trail had providentially guided them in to the post. 

Father Lacombe led them into the Fort entrusting 
them to the hospitality of Richard Hardisty, the trader 
in charge. Savoury rabbit-stew, the best the post 
could offer, was set before the hungry men and de- 
voured with relish. 

Through Idaho and Montana, at Buffalo Hump 
and Orafino, in Bitter-root Valley, at Bannock and 
Pike's Peak, then up in the Kootenays — the strangers 
had known miner's luck, vmtil now, drawn by the 
pale lure of Saskatchewan gold they had come on this 
voyage of mischance. 

It was in December, 1864, that the Rev. Father 
Vandenburghe of France arrived at St. Albert with 
Bishop Tache on a tour of inspection. Before their 
departure on January 9, new posts were assigned to 
Father Lacombe and his colleagues. As fond par- 
ents do with their children at Christmas, the Superiors 
had tried to give each his heart's desire — and so there 
fell to the lot of Father Lacombe "the mission of 
coursing the prairies to try and reach the poor savage 
Crees and Blackfeet." 

1909, was one of the party — himself a red-shirted miner in California 
for years before when there still were "deadfalls" in the saloons along 
the waterfront of 'Frisco, and when a man could spend at Placerville 
on Sunday most of the gold he had washed out of the rich gulches dur- 
ing the week. 



106 FATHER LACOMBE 1864. 

Father Lacombe was frankly delighted with his 
lot; St. Albert was becoming "trop civilise" for him, 
and his hajDpy experience in the plains-Cree camp 
had unsettled him for the mission-routine. "I was 
dismissed from the prefecture of St. Albert and given 
a free field to course after the Crees and Blackf eet on 
the prairies. Behold me in my element! Laetatus 
sum in Ms quae dicta sunt mihi!" 

With all the ardours of his warm nature Father 
Lacombe burned to reach every tribe on the plains — 
group after group, to gather these poor nomads in 
fresh colonies to live there in pastoral contentment 
and certainty of food. As each settlement was 
formed it would be his aim to turn it over to some of 
his younger brethren, while he pushed on again into 
the wilds with his Red Cross flag and his plough to 
bring into Christian submission still other bands of 
savages. 



Father Lacombe was now to be the missionary 
free-lance of the plains — to come and go as he would. 
It is with difficulty we follow the red and white 
gleams of his flag during the next six years. It was 
constantly appearing at the most unexpected points 
on the prairie between the Bow River and the Peace, 
the foothills and the Saskatchewan Forks. 

This was his immense hunting-ground for souls — 
an area inhabited by eight different tribes — and his 
fearlessness, energy and daring there so matched 
those qualities in the bravest of their chiefs that they 
came to regard him as a great Christian medicine- 
man. 

Yet there must have been other qualities in him 
more noticeable. For the Indian, when he names a 
white man, tries to sum up in one phrase the most 
striking qualities of the man — and to the Crees Father 
Lacombe was always known in this period as Ka- 
miyo-atchakwe (The Man-of-the-Beautiful-Soul). 
To the various Blackfeet tribes he was Arsous-kitsi- 
rarpi (The Man-of-the-Good-Heart). 

On January 17, 1865, he left St. Albert with his 
man Alexis and four good dogs hauling a toboggan- 
sleigh on which they had all the equipment necessary 
for several weeks — ^blankets and buffalo-robes for 
107 



108 FATHER LACOINIBE 1865 

sleeping in, an axe, Alexis' gun and provisions of 
dried meat for both dogs and men . . . "Et puis, 
nous voila en marche!" 

At Fort Edmonton Mr. Christie's hand was taken 
in greeting, as the friendly Factor wished them God- 
speed. They pushed on, breaking the trail for the 
dogs where it was necessary. The trip was made 
without hardship until the third morning out, when 
they woke to a heavy snow storm and cutting wind. 
The morning meal was eaten quickly, for they re- 
solved to reach the Cree camp near the Red River 
that night. 

"Marche, Pappillon! Marches, mes chiens!" the 
little missionary urged in encouragement, and his 
good dogs set off in the teeth of the wind, the travel- 
lers in turn breaking the way for them with snow- 
shoes. There was "a sweet zephyr blowing, and the 
temperature must have been forty degrees below 
zero," Father Lacombe recalls. 

Men talk little on these trips: there was but an 
occasional, "Are you cold, Alexis?" and "Not yet — 
but you, mon Pere?" — "Courage! I'm holding out 
well." 

A^'ibbling at dried meat instead of pausing for a 
meal they pushed on and reached the Crees' camp at 
night. 

"A person must have experienced a similar arrival 
to have any idea of this," Father Lacombe writes in 
his Memoirs. "The darkness, the deafening howls 
of the dogs, the yells of the Crees, the remains of 



1865 FATHER LACOMBE 109 

butchered animals Ij'ing about — and then the cold 
which devours youl" 

But a Christian chief — Abraham Kiyiwin — who 
recognized the priest at once drew him into his tent 
and made the two rest there after they had eaten a 
steaming dish of buffalo-meat. Even though the hour 
was late, some of the men came to talk with the 
Blackrobe, squatting about him on the robes near the 
fire. He quickly dismissed them however ; he wanted 
"a pleasant smoke, a bit of prayer and then — to bed." 

But not to sleep, with the dogs — "a band of thieves" 
— prowling around the tent half the night! In a 
dozing state he heard one gnaw at a bone close by — 
and he sleepily wonders if they would tear his own 
body with their strong white teeth. But he is too 
tired to continue the speculation — "C'est egal: on 
dort" — He drops to sleep. 

For six weeks he laboured among these Crees, and 
here as always on the plains-mission his days passed 
in a regular routine. If he could get a good tepee, 
where there Avas no snow, or the smoke was not too 
thick he would set up a little portable chapel and be- 
gin the day with JNIass. After his breakfast, eaten 
from a rude dish as he squatted on the ground, he as- 
sembled the women, teaching them cateclaism, prayers 
or hymns. 

Fifty women with almost as many infants! — and 
when these last began to cry — "I assure you," says 
Father Lacombe, "it was interesting — something then 
to try your patience." 



110 FATHER LACOMBE 1865 

At noon he Avas accustomed to call the children, 
both boys and girls about him and spent the afternoon 
teaching them. At least with them, he says, he en- 
joyed peace and tranquillity. After the encampment 
had taken their evening meal his little bell was rimg 
by Alexis passing up and down through the camp 
like a crier, inviting all the men to the priest's tent. 

"Ah, this is something more serious and dignified," 
he recalls in his Memoirs. "They come with their 
pipes — sometimes we smoked a calumet, the cere- 
monial pipe. Then I take on an attitude more ma- 
jestic, more reserved, for these are the warriors, and 
they love ceremony. After each one has taken his 
place according to his rank, I intone in my finest 
voice a hymn. Then the sermon. 

"Then all to our knees — some squat ungratefully 
on their heels! We pray — ^we sing, and at the last 
we pass about the calumet, whose smoke hke incense 
crowns the religious service." 

In addition to these meetings the missionary vis- 
ited the sick to be foimd in most camps, and when he 
could, he administered healing drugs to them. Other 
diplomatic visits were paid to pagans of the tribe, of 
whom there were usually some in each camp. The 
most interesting of the Cree pagans — Wihaskokisepin 
— Chief Sweet Grass, head chief of the nation, was 
in this camp, but to Father Lacombe as to other 
priests he would only reply on religious matters : 

"Leave me in peace. When my time comes I will 
tell you." Notwithstanding this withholding of his 



1865 FATHER LACOMBE 111 

personal adherence he was one of the best friends the 
priest had on the plains. 

Before his departure Father Lacombe held a coun- 
cil in which he outlined his new plan of action, in- 
viting the councillors to help him select a place as 
a permanent mission for the Cree Indians. They 
decided upon Kamaheskutewegak — "The-prairie- 
which-comes-out-to-the-river," or as it was named by 
Father Lacombe/ St. Paul des Cris. 

Shortly after his return to St. Albert at the end 
of February a deputation of Blackfeet came for him, 
begging him to go with them. Their tribe was again 
stricken with a mysterious disease. They were help- 
less and panic-stricken. Father Lacombe hurried 
out to their camp and found them down with typhoid. 
It was not serious, however. There were few deaths; 
and after a couple of weeks he could return to St. 
Albert. 

Here another call to Rocky Mountain House 
awaited him. Other bands of Blackfeet were down 
with the same disease. He went, and ministered to 
them for some weeks. 

Early in May he rafted down the Saskatchewan to 
the site of his new establisliment,^ one hundred and 
fifty miles east of Fort Edmonton. The Company 

1 This old Mission station is now named Brousseau. 

2 Father Lacombe has in his possession still the Journal of St. Paul 
de Cris, written on a sheaf of foolscap pages doubled to about four 
inches in width, with a tattered brown Manila cover. This, although 
not complete, keeps definite record of many of the goings and com- 
ings of Father Lacombe in those days — and fortunately so, for even 



112 FATHER LACOMBE 1865 

had objected to this site, claiming that it would draw- 
away the Indians from Fort Pitt. 

But the Crees favoured it. Likewise the soil was 
so fertile and so easily broken that Father Lacombe 
determined to locate there in the hope of getting some 
of the Metis and Indians to till the land as at St. 
Albert. He found a large encampment of Crees, 
faithful to their promise, awaiting him. They 
greeted him with enthusiasm, running into the water 
to pull his raft ashore. 

On this he and Alexis had fifty bushels of potatoes, 
seed-grain, a plow and provisions. His brother 
Gaspard and one Noel Courtepatte had conveyed 
other provisions over-land in ox-carts. As the multi- 
tude of Crees looked on with the interest of pros- 
pective owners the raft was unloaded. 

On the following day the eager young missionary 
started to plow. The women and children flocked 
behind him, crushing the earth with their hands into 
fine particles. A couple of days later when the 
ground was prepared it was the women again who 
dropped the potatoes and vegetable-seeds. 

The men tacitly objected to taking any active part, 
and Father Lacombe soon found it was not Metis 
he was dealing with here. He put himself to work 
this spring quite as energetically as at St. Albert, 
but with less success and half-hearted assistance. En- 

his own memory, so retentive ordinarily of details, has but an incom- 
plete record of these days. His rapidity of movement confused even 
himself. 



1865 FATHER LACOMBE . IIS 

feebled perhaps by his unusual hardships and exer- 
tions of the past four months he fell ill. The third 
week in May he writes to Bishop Tache: 

"The heat of spring has changed the malady of 
the winter to a form of dysentery which carries off all 
whom it attacks. After ten days I am almost over- 
come by it. AU our work is stopped, and I can only 
minister to the sick. If this sickness carries me off, 
at least my sacrifice is made. I wiU die happy among 
my neophytes, ministering to them as long as I have 
strength." 

But he gradually recovered. Then as the Crees 
went off to the prairies to hunt buffalo he returned 
to St. Albert to convalesce. 

In June he returned, bringing his brother. To- 
gether they improved the "skeleton of a house" built 
the previous winter by Gaspard and Alexis. Gas- 
pard returned to St. Albert. For Father Lacombe 
it was: 

"Hurrah for the prairies! We all went. We 
traversed creek after creek, swollen now to torrents; 
but these were no obstacles to hungry Indians sigh- 
ing for fresh feasts of buffalo-meat. . . . Hey! 
I am in my element. My cart, my three horses, my 
good Alexis, and our Blackfoot cook with whom I 
am studying the Blackfoot language, my tent, my 
chapel-case, my catechisms and objects of piety — 
behold, my church and presbytery!" he writes to the 
Forets. 

"To teU the truth, I am as happy as a Prince of 



114 . FATHER LACOMBE 1865 

the Church. My people, about half of whom are 
Christian and men of great prestige as hunters — they 
respect me, they love me. I feel like a king here, a 
new Moses in the midst of this new camp of Israel. 
It is not the manna of the desert with which 
we are nourished, but it is the delicious buffalo- 
meat of the prairie which the good Master gives 
us." 

When they had travelled three days toward the 
great sea of the prairies the scouts ranging ahead 
wheeled back to signal to them — a herd of buffalo was 
ahead ! On the moment came the order to pitch camp. 
The women and old men hastened about this duty, 
while the hunters saddled their ponies. Guns, 
powder, balls, whip and lasso — they saw all were in 
place. Soon they were ready for the command — 
the Hunt began! 

Apart from the buffalo-hunts, which soon lost their 
novelty, the life on the plains was full of dehght for 
Father Lacombe. By day the wide green prairies 
drenched in radiant sunshine were pleasing. At 
night, when the fury of the hunt was passed and 
darkness put an end to the toil of the women, the 
scene was still beautiful, day lingering long above the 
purple-black expanse of the plains. Then he tells 
us: 

"Seated on the fresh grass, with the vaulted skies 
sown with stars for our House of adoration, silence 
falls — the ravens and the little birds are asleep, but 
man keeps watch. It is then our songs of good-night 



1865 FATHER LACOMBE 115 

are sung to the Great Spirit — and how beautiful seem 
these hymns of the children of the wilderness ! 

"And there amidst them, happy in his lot, see this 
man in a soutane. How eloquent and fine it seems 
to him to say to them in their own language — ^taught 
by these fierce warriors — 'Go, and sleep tranquilly, 
my children. May the Great Spirit bless you. Au 
revoir — till morning.' " 

Father Lacombe, desirous of dividing his new min- 
istry impartially between the Blackfoot nation and 
the Crees, directed liis way south toward a large camp 
of the former in October. He stayed some time with 
the Piegans and Bloods in the vicinity of the Red 
Deer River after he left St. Albert on October 23: 
then moved on to the camp of Chief Natous near 
Three Ponds,^ where he arrived at the close of No- 
vember. He was unaccompanied by Alexis and by 
a mere chance his young brother Gaspard was not 
with him. 

Father Lacombe had already undergone many 
hardships of the trail. He was now to realise the 
cro\\Tiing hazard of Indian life — "a terrible accident, 
which," as Father Andre MTote in a letter ^ of Octo- 
ber 26, 1866, to Father LeFloch, "came near remov- 
ing one of the most courageous and intrepid of our 
missionaries . . . Pere Lacombe." 

iThe scene of this battle was near the Battle River, some miles east 
of the present town of Hobbema. 

2 This letter is published in Vol. IV of the Quebec Rapports, in that 
portion devoted to chronicles of St. Boniface diocese. 



XI 

Food having become scarce in the south, Natous 
with other Blackfoot chiefs had led his band to the 
extreme northern boundary of their hunting ground. 
Camped a short distance away were two other bands 
of his nation, which Father Lacombe planned to visit 
when he had concluded his mission to the band of 
Natous. The possibility of any warlike interruption 
to his plans did not occur to him. He was, however, 
to have his entire plans for the winter upset by a re- 
newal of the war between the Crees and Blackfeet. 

This battle took place on the night of December 
the fourth. Father Lacombe was quartered in the 
lodge of Chief Natous. He and his savage host 
slumbered soundly on buffalo robes, their feet to the 
fire. . . . Suddenly harsh sounds forced them- 
selves to the chief's consciousness. Natous leaped to 
his feet. 

"Assinaw! Assinaw!" — The Crees! The Crees! — 
he cried instantly. His old wife rushed with him 
from the tent, Natous hastily priming his musket. 
In the darkness outside a deadly round of musketry 
crackled, then thundered, while weird lights quivered 
through the inky blackness : the Crees had come pre- 
pared for slaughter. Father Lacombe was shocked 
into rigidity for an instant: outside the voice of 
116 



1865 FATHER LACOMBE 117 

Natous rose rallying his warriors to the defense of 
their camp. 

The firelit lodge of the chief made a clear target 
for the enemy. Suddenly two poles snapped with 
the impact of balls that whizzed past Father 
Lacombe. As one in a stupor he noted smoking gun- 
wads fall near him. The soutane he had removed 
for the night, he now hastily threw on over his deer 
skin garments; snatching up the surplice and stole, 
and reverently kissing the cross of his Order before 
putting it in his belt, he prepared to move. 

In accordance with the discipline of rehgious 
Orders he paused to make a brief, generous offering 
of his life to his Maker, from whom death or hfe 
might come that night. Then he was himself again, 
alert and fearless. A small sack containing the holy 
oils he hung at his side. Taking up his Red Cross 
flag he went out of the tent. Outside, he found him- 
self in a hell of darkness and uncertainty and lust for 
blood. Many of the young Blackfoot warriors were 
away hunting buffalo, but those who remained under 
Natous fought on recklessly. 

Above the din rose the voice of Natous animating 
his followers and defying the enemy. Father 
Lacombe, incensed by the treaclierous attack, shouted 
an indignant command to the Crees to withdraw. 
Some of them were Christian, he felt, and would obey 
him. . . . 

His voice rang out from a chest strong and deep 
as a Viking's. In the hideous din of the carnage it 



118 FATHER LACOMBE 1««6 

was entirely lost. The old warriors were crying out 
encouragement and advice to the young men. Some 
of the braves had raised wild war-chants, and on both 
sides came the fiendish yells of unbridled passion. 
Father Lacombe abandoned his futile effort. 

The women, feverishly trying with knives and 
hands to dig trenches wherein to hide their children 
and themselves, raised their voices from time to time 
in lamentation. Within the camp in the darkness 
the living fell over the dead, and the wounded pleaded 
for help. 

To make the night more appalling, the frenzied 
barking of the dogs rose hideously, blended with the 
pitiful whinnies of frightened or dying horses. The 
night was profoundly dark, unlit by moon or stars. 
Only the sinister flash of the musketry lit the painful 
scene. 

Father Lacombe traversed the camping-groxmd over 
and over again, inspiring the warriors to their bravest 
efforts. He sought out the wounded, when he could 
find them in the darkness. A woman standing 
near him at the door of her lodge fell pierced by a 
bullet; he baptized her and prayed with her till she 
died. 

Next morning she was found scalped; a daring 
enemy had come into the lodge at some time through 
the night and carried off the coveted trophy. A 
thieving Assinaboine in the act of pillaging the chief's 
tent was pierced by a ball and fell across the pile of 
robes grasping Father Lacombe's breviary. Back 



1865 FATHER LACOMBE 119 

and forward through the darkness an intermittent 
rain of balls fell. Father Lacombe, moving contin- 
ually with words of encouragement to the warriors, 
seemed to bear a charmed life. 

At last, drawn by the sound of the battle, the Black- 
foot warriors of the other bands came to the rescue, 
though not before the enemy had practically com- 
pleted sacking the camp. 

One partjr of the rescuers was led by Crowfoot, a 
young man already for his wisdom and bravery made 
a chief among his people. In the darkness he came 
up to Father Lacombe. A flash from a gun lit up 
his face, showing it still and strong. 

"Who are you?" the priest asked, for the face was 
new to him. 

"Crowfoot," the warrior replied, and Father 
Lacombe, rejoicing in the arrival of the noted young 
warrior, urged him to do his best for the safety of 
his people. 

Three times that night the Crees and their Assina- 
boine recruits were repulsed from the hillock behind 
which the Blackfeet had secured cover, but dawn still 
foimd them fighting. Before this, twenty-five lodges 
— about half of the camp — had been destroj^ed. 

Grateful for returning daj% the Man of Prayer, 
in stole and surplice dingy with tlie smoke of battle, 
raising his crucifix in one hand and the Red Cross 
flag in the other, now called on his Blackfoot hosts 
to cease firing. Astounded at his actions, they com- 
plied and watched him walk deliberately out from the 



120 FATHER LACOMBE 1865 

broken circle of tents toward the enemy, holding his 
crucifix aloft and waving his white and red flag. 

The Indian warriors, trained to ambush in battle, 
marvelled at his bravery. Their Man-of-the-Good- 
Heart had always been to them a great medicine-man. 
Now he seemed a god come to their defence as he 
moved slowly through the mist, advancing directly 
upon the concealed enemy. The heroism of the action 
was unconscious, characteristic, superb. 

"Here! you Crees. Kamiyo-atchakwe speaks! 

He called aloud again and again, but his Crees did 
not hear him; and a fog, heavy with low-lying battle- 
smoke, hung like a curtain shutting him out from 
their vision. 

He called to the unseen enemy; he waved his flag, 
but his efforts were unavailing. The irregular fire 
continued, bullets whizzed past his head and ploughed 
in the ground beside him. The Blackfeet called out 
to him, begging him to return, when suddenly a ball, 
which had already touched the earth, rebounded to 
his shoulder and glancing off struck his forehead. 
The wound was a mere scratch, but the shock was so 
great he staggered and lost his footing. 

The Blackfeet believed him wounded — and a new 
wave of anger swept over their hearts. . . . The 
Crees had killed their friend, Arsous-kitsi-rarpi! — 
the Man-of-the-Good-Heart — ^who had nursed them 
through the typhoid and who was a hundred times 
endeared to them now by his unique bravery. 



1865 FATHER LACOMBE 121 

"Hee-yi-ho!" — they raised their war-cry; and flung 
themselves out upon the Crees — no longer repulsing 
attacks but driving one home to the heart of the 
enemy. From tepee to bluff — to coulee, they slipped 
over the thin snow, the Crees advancing and retreat- 
ing, pursuing the same tactics. The battle lingered 
while the fog lay on the land, and it was long after 
dawn before a Blackfoot warrior who lay near the 
enemy cried out to them with scorn in a luU of firing: 

"You have wounded your Blackrobe, Dogs! Have 
you not done enough?" 

When this startling word ran through the ranks 
of the Crees, the firing ceased. . . . Was it true 
that they had killed their father, the Man of Prayer, 
the friend of Rowand and of Christie, the big white 
chiefs ? 

The battle received a sudden check, and the Crees 
did not wait to meet their Blackrobe, but speedily 
withdrew in confusion. 

The engagement had lasted seven or eight hours, 
for the greater part of the time a disorderly skirmish. 
Of the Blackfeet, Chief Natous was badly wounded, 
about twelve persons were killed, two children stolen, 
and fifteen men and women wounded, some fatally. 
The camp had been pillaged of meat and robes, and 
twenty-five lodges destroyed. Their enemies carried 
ten dead warriors away from the snowy battlefield, 
while fully fifteen others were wounded. 

The following day, notwithstanding their fatigue 
and the ills of the wounded, the Chiefs ordered the 



122 FATHER LACOMBE 1865 

camp moved; ponies, hiiman beings and dogs were 
soon in line of march over the snowy trails to another 
and larger camp of their nation twenty miles away. 

Father Lacombe, like many of his Blackfoot 
friends, had lost in the battle all but what was on 
his person and the rescued breviary. Fully two 
hundred horses had been killed or stolen by the Crees, 
among them the two owned by Father Lacombe. 
The Indians, who at least never lacked in hospitality 
or generosity, gave him robes to keep him warm and 
lent him a horse to continue his journey. 

He stayed with Natous' band about ten days 
longer, consoling them and caring for the wounded. 
Then, with three Indians as companions, he set out 
for Rocky Mountain House, whither he had sent a 
courier in the autumn to make a rendezvous with the 
Indians for Christmas. 

It was a journey of several days during severe 
weather and over bad trails. The food of the little 
party consisted of an occasional partridge or rabbit, 
a few leathery pieces of dried meat, gnawed at by 
day, and at night boiled in snow-water. The last 
day found them fasting. 

When the little cavalcade finally drew up before 
the gates of the j)ost. Father Lacombe emerged from 
his buffalo robe, disfigured with stains and dirt, and 
stepped from his horse fairly into the arms of his 
astonished friend, Richard Hardisty.^ 

1 The late Richard Hardisty (later Chief Factor Hardisty) was a 
member of a family long connected with the service of the Company in 



1865 FATHER LACOMBE 123 

Shocked at finding Father Lacombe in tJiis guise, 
the warm-hearted trader began to make queries in a 
startled voice — when the other, with his irrepressible 
hvunour bubbling up again, reassured him : 

"Don't cry, don't cry, my frien'. I've been to war; 
but now — you see — I am back." 

There was reason, however, for Mr. Hardisty's 
alarm. Father Lacombe was about at the end of his 
resources and his friend set about restoring them. 

"Richard Hardisty treated me like a brother that 
day. I felt so sick and tired and hungry when I 
got to Mountain House that I was ready to lie down 
in the snow and die. But he took our miserable party 
in before his big fire, and warmed and fed us and 
clothed me, and I always feel since then that he saved 
my life," Father Lacombe recalls. 

We will leave him there happily seated before the 
blazing chimney-fire of Meekoostakwan (the Man- 
with-the-Red-Hair ) . The glowing blaze, like a warm 
soul in a homely person, beautified the whole dingy 
interior of the post — the smoky dark rafters, the log 
^alls and rude woodland furnishings. 

the Southern district, and was for several years In charge of Edmonton 
district. He waa a brother of Lady Strathcona. 



XII 

It was Christmas week at Fort Edmonton in the 
year 1865, and within the snowy quadrangle of the 
Fort preparations for the home- joys of Christmas 
were under way. 

Outside the gates were some Cree teepees whose 
owners had brought a rumour of Father Laeombe 
being killed in a battle near Three Ponds. They 
even showed a capot like his taken out of his tent, 
they said, and with several bullet-holes in it. The 
rumour was too terrible to be given credence, how- 
ever, and was set down as an Indian yarn. 

At the Big House, straying half-breed children 
found the kitchen for the time converted to a Para- 
dise of good dishes and savoury odours with Murdo 
MacKenzie, the cook from "bonny Stornaway," pre- 
siding. Elsewhere the steward — Malcolm Groat — 
saw to it that extra rations of fish and buffalo meat 
and grease were portioned out, and to this some grog 
added to drink the Factor's health. In her own 
quarters, Mrs. Christie, the granddaughter of fine old 
"Credo" Sinclair of York Factory, planned a Santa 
Claus for her little ones. 

A dog-cariole drawn at a merry trot by good dogs 
and followed by two sleds with their drivers came 
through the valley across the river. It was too cold 
124. 



1865 FATHER LACOMBE 125 

then for men to linger on the gossip-benches by the 
flagstaff outside the southern gate, but the dog-train 
was awaited with curiosity by those within the Fort. 

Several traders had already arrived from the out- 
posts and no one else was likely to make the Fort 
for Christmas but Richard Hardisty of Mountain 
House. One of the runners resembled him. . . . 
But who did he have comfortably wrapped in buf- 
falo-robes in the cariole? 

"You never know what you will meet around the 
bend — " is a proverb of the voyageur by land or 
water trail; and "You never know who will turn up 
next" might well be the word of the masters of Hud- 
son's Bay posts. 

When the dog-train drew up at the Fort and 
Father Lacombe stepped out of the robes and wrap- 
pings, there was boisterous dehght in the greetings 
of his friends. . . . Was ever an arrival more 
timely? 

Mr. Christie ushered the two arrivals into the Big 
House and the little knot of people dispersed to their 
quarters. Darkness fell; the big gates were clanged 
to, and the bell was rung for the evening meal and 
issuing of rations. 

That Christmas Eve the brown spaciousness of the 
mess-room quivered with interest, and the centre of 
it all — I\Iurdo MacKenzie ^ relates — was the worn 

1 When I met him forty-five years after this Christmas Eve, — still out 
of the range of modern Progress, still a cook in the employ of the big 
Company in its Peace River district. 



12fl 'FATHER LACOMBE 1865 

young priest in the ragged greasy soutane, who 
looked as though he had known hardsliips in plenty 
since he departed. 

The Gentlemen's mess-room of the Big House, 
where this dinner was given, was a fine room — noted 
alike for spaciousness and hospitality. Every one 
who visited Edmonton House from Paul Kane's time 
onward recorded its rugged pretentiousness. There 
was nothing finer in the west, except the old Coun- 
cil-room of Norway House. 

Time, for their isolated kingdom, was regulated 
by the great clock which hung on the mess-room wall. 
Pictures hung there, too, good pictures, and swords 
from the Old Land, and buffalo-horns and moose- 
heads from the plains and forest of the New. There 
was a cavernous fireplace and heavy mantel, about 
which for close on to fifty years the gentlemen of 
Edmonton House had lingered in chat after dinner. 

At one side was a table laden with the brass candle- 
sticks Murdo MacKenzie kept in polished array to 
light the dinner-table each night. Two immense 
heaters brought from England by way of the Hudson 
Bay were required to heat the room, 

"Ah, it was a grand place altogether," Murdo 
recalls. . 

On this Christmas Eve, while the Gentlemen 
listened, Mr. Christie plied his friends with questions, 
and Murdo lingered as he passed about the dishes. 
He recalls Father Lacombe telling how a bullet 
whizzed over his head as he bent to lift an object 



1866 FATHER LACOMBE 127 

from the floor of the camp, and showing where that 
reflected bullet struck his shoulder. 

To most that night would have seemed a terrifying 
experience, yet as we read in his letter to liis Superior- 
General, Monsignor Fabre, Father Lacombe could 
say: 

"I was never less afraid than I was during this 
combat." 

But even as he talked the Star of Peace and Good- 
will was on the hills with the old message the angels 
sang to the shepherds. . . . The story-telling 
and the dinner ended, and Father Lacombe and 
Father Andre made their way to the confessional, 
where the quick-tempered, child-hearted but now sub- 
dued, voyageurs waited to ease their minds and make 
their hearts ready for the coming of the Child. 

At midnight the bell pealed Yuletide greetings, and 
almost every one in the Fort came together in the 
church. The congregation listened there to the story 
of the Child-King told in English, French and Cree. 
They were wholesome western men, vigorous crea- 
tures of strong passions and ready faith, and they 
accepted happily the mysterious union of weakness 
and omnipotence, the tale of Love stooping to earth 
to win it otherwise than by force. 



During .the year 1866 work went on more or less 
steadily at St. Paul de Cris. Again a small crop 
was put in and the shelter thrown up in 1865 im- 



128 TATHER LACOMBE 1866 

proved. The mission became a stopping-place for 
priests to and from their missions. 

In the spring Gaspard Laeombe, who with the 
miners, Little and Filer, had tired of gold-mining on 
the Saskatchewan, bade good-bye to his brother, rid- 
ing thi'ough St. Paul de Cris on his way to St. Boni- 
face. 

Father Laeombe asked him if he felt any desire to 
join him in mission work. The young fellow half 
laughed, half shuddered at the idea. To live day 
after day in garments infested with vermin; to exist 
for weeks on dry meat or pemmican without tea — 
nothing in the world, he felt, could tie him to it, and 
he had no supernatural impulse to impel him. 

So away he went to resume a life of fruitless con- 
tented wandering from the Red River to Mexico, 
from the Mississippi to the coast. 

Most of the year of 1866 was spent by Father 
Laeombe on the prairies with his Indians. With a 
few weeks of rest at St. Albert after his eventful 
trip to the Blackfeet, he set out by dog-train for St. 
Paul de Cris. His only companion was a quaint 
little Irish-American called Jimmy-from-Cork, who 
had drifted into Fort Edmonton and was now anxious 
to make his way to the Red River. This man — 
Jimmy McCarthy — who was to make himself con- 
spicuous at Fort Garry in 1870 — ^had even then a 
varied and sombre career behind him. 

Sam Livingstone and Jimmy Gibbons, the Forty- 
niners, standing on the river-bank near Victoria, one 



1866 FATHER LACOMBE 129 

day in January, 1866, as Father Lacoinbe came trot- 
ting behind his dog-train, were astounded to find that 
the httle man snuglj- wrapped in robes in Father 
Lacombe's dog-cariole was Jimmy-from-Cork! 

The hospitable miners called out an invitation to 
the travellers to share their mid-day meal with them. 
Father Lacombe — his clumsy soutane tucked up 
about his leather trousers, as it always was when he 
travelled behind dogs — busied himself first with food 
for the animals. But his genial little companion. 
Gibbons recalls, stepped out of the cariole and pat- 
ting the priest on the shoulder, said airily to his hosts : 

"We've had a good trip, boys. Father Lacombe 
is a damn good runner, and he knows that Jimmy- 
from-Cork's legs are too short to run." 

Assuredly fraternal charity and the frontier brings 
strange bed-fellows together! 

Jimmy was, however, but a sliip-in-the-night in 
Father Lacombe's life — one never hailed again — and 
in this unlike his hosts who remained liis friends for 
theii lifetime. Livingstone interested him greatly as 
one of the most picturesque figures he had met in the 
west. The son of an Anghcan rector in Ireland 
and born in the Vale of Avoca, he had drifted through 
the United States to the Saskatchewan. 

He was a fine-looking man, brimful of Celtic fire, 
with grizzled white hair worn long, down on his shoul- 
ders after the fashion of his old friend. Dr. John 
McLoughlin, the ruler of Oregon. Leather trousers 
and red shirt, and a gay handkerchief knotted about 



180 FATHER LACOMBE 1866 

his throat with another on his wide sombrero com- 
pleted in Sam Livingstone a striking picture of the 
frontiersman. 

In February of this year Father Lacombe, going 
out from St. Paul with Alexis, made a trip north to 
meet some bands of wood-Crees. Following the 
direction of moans that broke the quiet of their camp 
one night, they found an Indian woman who had fled 
from her husband's tent when he brought another 
wife there, and after wandering all night and day 
found herself again at the abandoned camp of her 
people. 

Her forces were exhausted, her feet frozen. Mis- 
ery and hardship had dried her breast, and when her 
infant hungered there his cries pierced her numbing 
senses, prompting her vain search for help. Disap- 
pointed, she had lain down by the ashes of a camp-fire 
with a prayer to the Master of Life to spare her child. 

Her people had only changed camp that day, and 
by hard travelhng on the following day Father 
Lacombe came up to them. The worthless husband 
refused to take his wife or child to his tent again, but 
he scurried there himself with the lash of the Black- 
robe's scorn shaming him before liis people. The 
woman was taken in a dog-sleigh to St. Albert, where 
the Sisters took herself and child into their home. 

This year again on the prairies in the camps of 
the Crees as in previous seasons Father Lacombe met 
with Wihaskokiseyin (Sweet-Grass), the interesting 
pagan Indian. Father Lacombe describes him at 



1867 FATHER LACOMBE 131 

this period as being unusually short for an Indian 
warrior and hunter. His bronzed features were fine, 
his body agile, his manner pleasant and rather grace- 
ful and though not of the stature of a great warrior 
he carried himself as a man who was every inch a chief 
and leader of men. 

Toward the close of tliis year an Indian courier 
from the North brought Father Lacombe a letter 
from Bishop Grandin, appointed coadjutor to 
Bishop Tache in 1857. The Bishop was about to 
come south and establish a See at St. Albert — ^leav- 
ing the Athabasca-Mackenzie vicariate to the newly- 
consecrated Bishop Faraud. 

He asked Father Lacombe to meet him at Carlton. 
He was naturally anxious to see the most noted of 
the workers in his new charge. Father Lacombe, 
equally desirous to meet one of the apostles of the 
Arctic missions planned to combine business with 
pleasure. He proposed to secure for St. Paul de Cris 
an allocation as a mission, with a resident priest and 
an annual grant from the Propagation funds for the 
diocese — to make of it, in fact, another St. Albert. 

Leaving his flocks on the plains in March he hired 
"a good tough Indian" as guide, and with his own 
dogs they made Fort Pitt in four days. Here he 
hired a new guide, the first pleading fatigue. 

Some Indians at the Fort begged him to spend a 
day or two with them before they left for the prairies, 
and Father Lacombe could not refuse. 

The morning after they left Pitt they woke to a 



132 FATHER LACOMBE 1867 

head wind and mild weather. The snow thawing 
burdened their snowshoes and the sun, dazzling on 
the white plains, hurt their eyes. 

On the last day named by the Bishop for the meet- 
ing at Carlton, the post was still 65 miles away. In 
turn each walked ahead of the dogs to beat the trail, 
holding deerskin mitts to screen their aching eyes. 
At night they made a fire to brew some tea, but they 
could not bear to look on the fire, and Father Lacombe 
went to sleep rolled in a blanket holding his eyebrows 
away from his inflamed eyes in hope of relief. 

The following day the hght was cruelly dazzling 
as before, and the snow mushy by noon. Nightfall 
found the travellers approaching Fort Carlton. As 
they dragged themselves up the Fort hill, they met 
an old Indian who told them the Bishop had left that 
morning! . . . At the post Father Lacombe 
found a letter from him. It was in French, in the 
fine vague scrawl decipherable only by those familiar 
with His Lordship's writing. The trader could not 
read it, and Father Lacombe's eyes were too sore to 
puzzle over it. 

This was surely the refined cruelty of Fate. 

What is to be done about it I — the priest asked him- 
self ? Retrace his steps, and have endured the hard- 
ships of that trip for nothing! The thought came 
only to be dismissed. . . . He would of course 
follow the Bishop. 

"How far away do you think their camp wUl be 
to-night?" he asked the master of the Fort. 



1867 FATHER LACOMBE 133 

The latter calculated the hour of starting and the 
condition of the trails — "Only twenty miles, or less," 
he returned, with perhaps hidden encouragement for 
the plucky priest. 

"Will you lend me fresh dogs?" 

Eheu! the dogs were all out with the hunters and 
the clerks. Thirty miles that day was enough for 
even a good traveller and his dogs — but the Bishop 
was ahead on the trail, shpping over the white plains 
to the Red River. . . . The tired dog-train must 
push on further. 

So it was that at nine o'clock Father Lacomhe set 
out again. The network of his snowshoes, that had 
been wet all day and now was frozen, cut the tired 
muscles of his feet. His poor dogs lagged, though the 
track was lighter than during the sunlit day : the only 
fresh creature on the trail was the Metis who had 
replaced his Fort Pitt guide. . . . ("That Fort 
Pitt Metis had to rest at Carlton. He was the sec- 
ond man I knocked out on that big trip," Father La- 
combe recalled forty years later with a smihng moue 
of conscious pride.) 

He was now traveUing mechanically — ^the mind 
keyed to reach the goal in front and the poor body 
dragged behind. He followed the trail mile after 
mile doggedly, until they reached a point where it 
touched the river. They confidently looked for the 
camp here. But no dogs barked as they approached : 
there was no debris of fallen boughs. . . . The 
trail wound back from the river — no camp there. 



134i FATHER LACOMBE 1867 

At this disappointment, coming when liis eager soul 
had been attuned to hear Bishop Grandin's surprised 
greeting, Father Lacombe's fatigue suddenly over- 
came him. He pitied his panting dogs, flung prone 
on the snow for repose. 

"It is enough," he said to his man. "Make a fire 
here; we go back to-morrow." 

It was now after midnight. 

The Metis was sympathetic, as Metis guides have 
it in their nature to be: but he had heard the young 
Bishop lamenting that he had missed this other Man- 
of-Prayer. So when they "spelled" he encouraged 
Father Lacombe to make still another effort. 

"Maybe they are not half a mile ahead," he ven- 
tured. 

On again through the soft starlight across the plains 
— a mile was passed, and nearly three — when in a 
bluff by the river bank they came upon the camp ! 

The Bishop's northern dogs barked most wolfishly. 
The wearied newcomers answered with fainter yelps, 
as the two men slipped quietly into camp. Bishop 
Grandin, throwing back his buffalo-skin coverings, 
rose eagerly to meet them, crying with quick Gallic 
gladness. 

"Is this you. Father Lacombe? Is it possible!" 

He took his tired confrere into his arms, embracing 
him as men of the Latin races do, and the wornout 
priest let his tears come as they would. They always 
did come easily to his emotional temperament. 

The sinking fire was piled high again, the teakettle 



1867 FATHER LACOMBE 135 

swung hospitably over it, and Avlien the entire camp 
had shared in this luxury of the plains the men 
dropped off to sleep, while the two priests talked long 
by the fire. 

The Bishop was pressing his companion to come 
on to St. Boniface at daybreak, and share with him 
the pleasure of meeting Bishop Tache — that charm- 
ing prelate, who could be profound or stately as a 
Lord Chancellor and as irresistably droll as a school- 
boy. But Father Lacombe refused; neither his dogs 
nor himself had strength left for the trip, he pleaded. 



XIII 

Next morning the Bishop took matters into his 
own hands, exercising the privilege of bishops and 
friends. He sent the Metis back to Fort Pitt with 
the dogs and equipment, forwarding word also to St. 
Paul de Cris that Father Lacombe had gone to St. 
Boniface. . . . Though at St. Paul Father La- 
combe, free-lance of the missions, was expected only 
when he arrived! 

Starting for St. Boniface, Father Lacombe was in- 
vited to seat himself in the Bishop's cariole ; the latter 
would travel on snowshoes. Father Lacombe pro- 
tested against enjoying the comforts of the cariole, 
but he was commanded in obedience to his superior 
to stay there, and he did. 

The pleasant motion of the cariole, as the dogs drew 
it swiftly over the trail, combined with his over- 
wrought muscles to produce a sleep so profound that 
all day he was unconscious of his voyage and com- 
panions. He slept through the noon-spell, when the 
men silently prepared a meal, and when he awoke 
at the night's camping-place to see Bishop Grandin 
coming up to the fire vsdth some faggots on his shoul- 
der, he saluted him: 

"Heh! Haven't we started yet?" 
136 



1867 FATHER LACOMBE 137 

Alwaj's quick to recuperate, he was as fresh as a 
chickadee next morning, and insisted upon yielding 
the cariole to its owner. 

From St. Boniface the Bishop went on to France 
to secure fresh funds and workers for his missions. 
In June Father Lacombe returned from the Red 
River with Father Leduc and a party of five Grey 
Nuns for the Mackenzie district — "these pearls of 
the world, who came as a blessing to the poor women 
and children of our missions," Father Lacombe 
writes. 

Father Leduc, the new travelling-companion of our 
missionary, was a shrewd humorous recruit to the 
mission-field from Brittanj% and on this trip a life- 
long friendship between the two men took root. 

On August 13 there appeared at St. Paul de Cris 
the first brigade of carts brought over the prairies 
from St. Boniface by the Company. There were 
eighty-two carts — a showing which quite eclipsed 
Father Lacombe's modest pioneer brigade of 1862, 
and two days were occupied by their passing. The 
big company was five years behind the missionaries 
in adopting this method of transportation, but like 
all strong and conservative forces when it made the 
change it did so with eclat. 

Eighty-two carts ! To the wide-eyed natives at St. 
Paul the sight was as awe-inspiring as the steam-horse 
and iron road were to be years later. And as though 
this were not in itself sufficiently wonderful — ten 
days later there came creaking and groaning up the 



138 FATHER L'ACOMBE 1867 

trail a second brigade of thirty-two carts belonging 
to the Company! 

Between the fading lines of this old entry in the 
Journal can be read much wonderment and much 
leisure on the part of svmdry dusky braves, who joyed 
in counting the carts as they passed rumbling down 
the trail. 

One evening in October when Father Lacombe was 
in a small camp of Crees he had a new experience. 
The night prayer was over, but about twenty old men 
lingered near the priest's tent smoking and talking 
with him. 

The long twilight lying in a gold fringe of light 
over the prairies was a beautiful hour ; to Father La- 
combe sitting among his old warriors, smoking his 
pipe with long draughts, and imbibing the quaint 
wisdom of the primeval races, it was particularly 
beautiful. 

Suddenly their pleasurable calm was broken into 
by a rude war-chant ! 

"Heh! Heh! Hi-yi-ho-ho-huh!" 

A band of young warriors returning from a hunt 
came riding out upon the ridge of land to the west. 
They advanced with the haze of orange light behind 
them, their ponies darkly silhouetted against the sky, 
their voices rising and falling in wild triumph. 

They dashed into the encampment on panting 
ponies. The old men looked up with interested en- 
quiry; the women and children roused from their 



1867 FATHER LACOMBE 139 

tents came eagerly out to greet them, while the re- 
turned warriors proudly exhibited a prisoner, a young 
woman of one of the southern tribes. 

When she caught sight of the priest sitting among 
the old men, she slipped from her horse and threw 
herself at Father Lacombe's feet, crying softly to 
herself. She was clad in white deerskin tunic, and 
her long dark hair was hanging loose about her. As 
she laiy there the young men described with enthusi- 
asm a chance encounter with a small band of Sarcee 
hunters, in which this woman's husband and a couple 
of others were killed. 

Father Lacombe tells the story. 

"I heard their talk. When they finish, — 'Bon,' 
I say. 'Who owns this woman?' 

" 'I do,' said one young warrior, a strong proud- 
looking man. 

" 'Well, I want you to sell her to me.' 

"They all laughed. 'I thought,' that young man 
said, 'you JNIen-of-Prayer did not want women.' 

"I was cross then, for if you let an Indian be rude 
or too familiar with you, he keeps on and you lose 
all control of him. 

" 'Ha, you are a brave man!' I said. 'You make 
a weak woman a prisoner: now you come and say a 
thing so stupide to me. You know well why I want 
to buy this woman.' 

" 'I know,' the man said then ashamed at my voice. 
'But I do not want to sell her. I want her.' 



140 FATHER LACOMBE 1867 

"He looked at her, when he said that: she was a 
fine young woman, you know. 'I want a wife,' he 
said, 'and I have nothing to huy one.' 

" 'Well, if you will sell this one now, I will give 
you a horse ; and I will give you goods from the Fort 
- — a new coat — and shirt — and leggings for yourself, 
and some tea and tobacco.' 

"I speak this all slowly, and I add to it because 
he did not look willing at first ; but when I had finish 
he said quickly: 

" 'Ha! you may take her. You offer much for 
her.' 

"He was so quick at the last I tliink maybe he was 
afraid I would change my mind about paying so 
much. 

"Then I say to the young woman: 'You are my 
property now, you see' — and I put my hand on her 
head and speak severely: 'You must do what I tell 
you and go only where I tell you.' I was afraid she 
might take up with another young Cree warrior by- 
and-bye, and the two run away from the camp. 

"And I had my mind made up already to take that 
girl back to her people: Oh, I was planning a grand 
coup. 

"She told me she was a Sarcee girl and that she 
knew my face when she rode in to the camp. She 
had seen me once when I was down with the Blackfeet 
and her own people, who are of allied nations. She 
prayed me now to protect her. 

"I gave her in charge of a good Christian family 



1867 FATHER LACOMBE r41 

until we brought her up to the Sisters at St. Al- 
bert." 

The Sarcee girl had now reached a haven in the 
little log convent, where during the winter she learned 
a little English together with the white women's ways. 
Next spring we shall see her figuring again rather 
dramatically in Father Lacombe's history. 

After leaving the girl at St. Albert Father La- 
combe returned to St. Paul and evidently had a hard 
time for several weeks, because the journal — like old 
Hudson's Bay journals in northern posts — records 
little else but cold, sickness and trouble. There were 
few fish to be had; the wolves ate his horses; Indians 
about the mission fell ill, and the little house was 
turned into a hospital with as many as ten patients 
at once. 

In November Alexis the famous was sent to St. 
Albert for horses. The Journal relates with obvious 
pathos that after being a very long time away from 
the mission, because of severe weather, Alexis re- 
turned with only one horse! And of what use was 
one horse for the new surprising enterprise which 
Father Lacombe planned? 

During the past simimer he had designed a house- 
tent and his heart was set upon celebrating Midnight 
Mass for his Indians in this ambulant chapel; but it 
was too heavy for the dogs to haul to the prairies. 
Father Lacombe finally succeeded in buying another 
horse from an Indian, and he and Alexis set out 
proudly for the plains. The Journal's meagre entry 



142 FATHER LACOMBE 1867 

for the rest of December was a note of severe cold 
and snowstorms. 

But the simply-worded and more lengthy entry for 
January, 1868, is pitiful in what it conveys between 
the lines. Like all the other items of this smoke- 
stained Journal it is in French and reads: 

"January, 1868. 

"This voyage and mission of Pere Lacombe have 
been very trying, not because of so much work among 
the Indians but chiefly for the great Fast which he 
and his companions endured during twenty ^ days : 
they having nothing but some mouthfuls of dirty and 
disgusting nourishment to eat, and that only at night 
after having tramped all day in snow, sometimes 
above the knees. 

"Notwithstanding these adversities the Father was 
able to visit and see all the Christians of this mission. 
They were found scattered at different points of the 
prairie in the hope of falling in with buffalo — and 
these were not nxmierous this year. ... It was 
opposite the Nose Hill that the Father made this mis- 
sion. . . . 

"The house-tent went well enough — ^the Father 
being able to accommodate fifty to sixty people in it 
for the services." 

At the outset Father Lacombe's mind was greatly 
occupied by his house-tent, the newest idea evolved 

1 These twenty days included fourteen days on the trip out to find the 
first encampment and six days later while again looking for other camps 
of the Crees. 



1867 FATHER LACOMBE 143 

from his fertile brain and one with which he hoped 
to astonish and dehght his nomads. 

For years the French priests in the west had 
plodded along as best they could with nothing better 
than a skin tepee. But if there was a brisk wind it 
was often impossible to celebrate Mass in a tepee, be- 
cause the smoke circled about the lodge half-way up 
and filled the throat of a man standing. 

Once Father Lacombe had to celebrate Mass on 
his knees to avoid the smoke. Another day at the 
elevation his crucifix hanging to the tent above his 
head plunged into the chalice. 

To avoid any such accidents he had designed his 
house-tent of leather. He bought fifty tanned buf- 
falo skins from Indians at St. Paul. With twenty 
poles as big as his wrist in circumference and with 
iron pegs got from the Company's blacksmith at Fort 
Edmonton he contrived to pin the frame of his house 
together and then fasten the peaked roof upon it. 
The dimensions of the house-tent were 25 feet by 15. 

The buffalo skins were shaped to make a deep cov- 
ering secured about the base with banks of snow. 
This last convenience served two purposes — it held 
down the walls and kept out the thieving Indian dogs, 
which were — he gravely stated once — "just bands of 
devils." He had with him besides a small camp- 
stove as heater. 

With Alexis and all this paraphernalia he started 
out on Decernber 4, 1867, from St. Paul, his two 



144) FATHER LACOMBE 1867 

horses drawing the equipment and an aged, destitute 
Blackf oot woman who had been thrown on their mercy 
at the mission. Under her tuition Father Lacombe 
hoped that winter on the prairie to increase his knowl- 
edge of the Blackfoot tongue. 

He had a fresh reason for this study : he was plan- 
ning for the next summer a coup d'Etat to be fol- 
lowed by a vigorous campaign of Christianity among 
all the warlike, stubborn southern tribes. 

Provisions formed but a small part of the equip- 
ment on leaving St. Paul, for the supplies there had 
been about consumed by the sick Indians maintained 
through the autumn. They had some frozen fisli and 
pemmican — enough in aU to last them a couple of 
days on their journey to a camp of Crees near the 
Battle River. 

There was no trail broken; the snow was deep and 
progress was slow. The second night, as they were 
deciding to camp, they saw a thin smoke rising from 
a clump of trees nearby. They went to it, and found 
a group of eighteen miserable Indians — ^men, women 
and children — "only skin and bones, almost starved. 
For many days not a mouthful of food — poor people ! 
Mon Dieu, but they were miserables — so thin, and 
the children too weak to play or cry !" 

They answered listlessly to Father Lacombe's ques- 
tions but their very looks seemed to ask him what he 
would do for them. They had come down from the 
wooded country, where they had had no luck all 



1867 FATHER LACOMBE 145 

autumn. Neither fur nor food had been found in 
any quantity, and they were looking for their kinsmen 
on the plains. They had eaten their horses and dogs. 
They were now at the end of human endurance. 



XIV 

There was only one thing for Father Lacombe to 
do. First he ordered Alexis to pitch camp beside 
them. 

"Now, Alexis, and you, Suzanne, have you the 
courage to risk having nothing to eat for three days !" 
he asked his companions. "For my part, I am will- 
ing." 

"Yes," each agreed simply; and "I have often 
starved before," the squaw added. So, too, had 
Alexis, but he was more sparing of words. 

Then Alexis gave out the tea and pemmican, and 
five or six fish — all they had, altogether insufficient 
and rapidly devoured. As for Father Lacombe and 
his party they might be the proud guardians of the 
finest tent in the northwest but they went to bed 
that night without supper, and with little prospect 
of breakfast. 

Next morning the journey was resumed, the priest 
and his party leading the way to break the road for 
the famished company straggling behind. 

"Try and follow us," he told them. "But I have 
no more food, and I do not want to kill my horses yet. 
I need them too badly this winter." 

The poor Crees taking heart from his sympathy 
dragged themselves along the beaten trail. All that 
146 



1867 FATHER LACOMBE 147 

day the travellers found only one rabbit and a 
partridge. A mouthful for twenty persons! These 
morsels were cooked and given to the children. 

That night they camped in a big snowstorm. The 
next day and still the next there was nothing but 
snow and cold, and the sad little section of humanity 
dragged its way slowly across the wide plains. Their 
stomachs shrank with the gnawing hunger-ache. 
Their tired hearts panted sickly forward to the camp- 
fires of their tribe. 

The clamour of dogs and children, the smoky lit- 
tered tepees, the rank steaming kettles had some- 
times been repulsive to him, but Father Lacombe in 
his heart now felt he would never despise an Indian 
tepee again, even at its worst of dogs and vermin 
and dirt. 

On the fifth day out they approached the rendez- 
vous indicated by the courier at St. Paul. . . . 
They came up to it before dusk — ^but to find the bit- 
terest disappointment awaiting them. 

The Crees had pitched off to another point. The 
skeleton frames of their tepees were standing — ^that 
Avas all; and the wanderers felt even Hope desert 
them as they looked on these chilly witnesses of the 
vanished cheer. 

A heavy snowfall had covered up the trail their 
tribe had taken. . . . 

The disappointment was agony, and the torment 
of their hunger returned tenfold. The starving com- 
pany were free on the trackless prairie — yet their very 



148 FATHER LACOMBE 1867 

freedom mocked them as the blindest impasse might 
have done. And above and beyond every other feel- 
ing was their hunger. They had not eaten at all that 
day. 

Father Lacombe sent Alexis off with his gun to 
search for food : the others were past that effort. For 
his part he fastened snowshoes on and went to look 
out from a hill in hope of some guidance. There 
was nothing for him; and he, too, like the others was 
failing with weakness. . . . His sight was con- 
fused; his neck seemed to totter under the weight of 
his head. He was not racked any longer with hun- 
ger, but the faintness of death was on him. He ral- 
lied, and caught his mind wandering as if he were in 
delirium. 

Yesterday they had eaten and drank — a bouillon 
made of the skins of old sacks, cords of sinews and 
old pieces of moccasins ! 

At nightfall they had scraped off the snow and 
were camped for the night — when the priest heard 
the creaking of Alexis' snowshoes, and by the sound 
of his steps felt sure he carried a burden. They all 
pricked up their ears at the soimd, and when Alexis 
came into camp went eagerly out to meet him. 

He had a burden — some pieces of meat from a buf- 
falo bull he had killed, as he found it diseased and 
dying, abandoned by the herd. 

The emaciated Indians threw pieces of the meat 
into boiling water and gladly ate their disgusting 
portion and drank the bouillon, but the sight and 



1867 FATHER LACOMBE 149 

smell of it only filled Father Lacombe with nausea. 
He tried the repulsive stuff; his offended stomach re- 
fused to retain it. 

That night the great lights of the north rose in 
such splendour that even Father Lacombe in his ex- 
haustion could not forbear to marvel at them. To 
the Indians bred in the belief that these were the 
spirits of their ancestors, the ghostlj^ white lights 
shooting across the sky were as sjDirits beckoning in- 
sistently from their skj'ey realms to the sickened, 
hopeless group of humanity huddled about the green- 
wood fire on the trail that led Nowhere. 

For fourteen days in all this blind search and pain- 
ful walking, with the griping fast continued. In all 
that time the disgusting meat that Alexis brought 
and an occasional rabbit or prairie-chicken was all 
that stood between the wayfarers and utter starva- 
tion. 

"But, Oh, those horses getting weak — and those 
people dragging themselves behind !" . . . 

In that heart-wrung exclamation of the old mis- 
sionary decades later can be seen the whole painful 
picture that made so cruel a blot on the wliite prairies. 
Had the JNIaster of Life no thought then for liis clail- 
dren? — The birds of the air were sybarites compared 
to these. 

"JNIy dear friends and you who seat yourselves at 
tables covered with appetizing food whenever you 
need it, let me teU you," Father Lacombe wrote of 
this to the Forets, "how painful and torturing it is to 



160 FATHER LACOMBE. 1867 

know hunger in circumstances like these ! Up to that 
time in my sermons and instructions to the Indians — 
some of them lazy — I had said many times, I had 
proclaimed, that those who did not want to work — 
should not eat. 

"But now, after such an experience, I have changed 
my ideas, and I have taken the resolution to share 
my last mouthful with anyone who is hungry. After 
experiencing such hardship from hunger how clearly 
one understands these words of the Father of the 
Poor: 'I was hungry, and you gave me not to 
eat.'" . . . 

The starving band had reached the last point of 
endurance, though all were still hving. The horses 
were growing weak from the continual wandering 
and difficulty to paw down to the grass imder the deep 
snow. 

As a last resource Father Lacombe one night told 
the camp he was resolved to kill his horses one by one. 
He had made the resolution before, but had neither 
expressed it nor carried it out. The following morn- 
ing — this was Sunday, as he recalls it — fresh hope 
came to him with returning light. He told Alexis 
they would put off killing the horse until night. 
. . . They could endure one day longer. 

But the horse was never killed. 

Two hours after midnight, the innocent prodigals 
came upon the hearth fires of their people. There 
was joy on both sides — better still, plenty to eat in 
the camp. This was something of which the new- 



1867 FATHER LACOMBE 151 

comers would hastily assure themselves, but their peo- 
ple wise from similar experience gave them at first 
only bouillon with tiny pieces of buffalo-meat chopped 
in it. 

Food, fire and the sense of Home was theirs: that 
was Heaven after the cold and pitiless uncertainty 
of the plains. 

In three or four days they had begun to eat sohd 
food and live like their brethren — which for that sea- 
son and in that particular camp meant living very 
well, with dried meat in abundance, fresh pieces of 
rib-meat and buffalo hump. What more could the 
heart of the plainsman desire? 

It was now Christmas Eve — Ka-nipa-ayam-itiak 
(The-time-we-pray-at-night). Although still weak 
Father Lacombe had to bestir himself. He had spent 
the first days in the lodge of Chief Sweet-Grass, but 
now he showed the materials for his house-tent to 
the Indians and asked them to set it up. They com- 
plied with dehght ; it was an honour to have anything 
to do in connection with this novelty. 

The snow was cleared away by the squaws, while 
the men set up the frame and covering. The camp- 
stove was put in place, a pile of wood cut for it and 
the snowy ground of the tent covered with boughs and 
buffalo-skin. Such luxury and comfort had never 
been known on the plains before. 

When Father Lacombe was installed the old men 
gathered about his doorway. Awed by the elegance 
of his domicile they were at first shy about entering. 



152 FATHER LACOMBE 1867 

But they soon found their way in with their pipes 
and philosophy and made themselves entirely at home 
• . . until Father Lacombe had to clear the room 
to hear the confessions of those who were already 
Christian. 

For the first time on the prairie Father Lacombe 
was to exercise his priest's privilege of celebrating 
three Masses on this one day of the year. From his 
doorway, when the bell had called the camp to atten- 
tion, he announced that all the chiefs and hunters were 
to attend the first Mass, the women the second, while 
the Mass after daylight was to be for the children. 

Midnight found him at an altar made of poles sur- 
mounted by his chapel-box in which were the vest- 
ments, the altar-stone, the linen and vessels necessary 
on the altar. Every foot of kneehng-space was oc- 
cupied by the men. 

"As I robed myself for that Mass," he has written, 
"this is what passed in my heart. . . . 'The Holy 
Gospel tells us that the shepherds of the valley of 
Bethlehem came to the stable to adore the divine 
Child. And here to-night in this wild country in 
North America another kind of shepherds — the shep- 
herds of the great flocks of buffalo — are kneeling 
down to adore the same Child Jesus, the Son of God, 
that lay on the straw in Bethlehem in the far east.' 

"And when these old shepherds began to sing the 
canticles of the Church in their OM^n tongue — 'Emigwa 
tibishayik' — 'Ca, hergers assemblons-nous' — for some 
time I could not begin my Mass because the tears 



1867 FATHER LACOMBE 153 

came and I wept. Ah, that scene was a poeme. 
'Sasay Manito, awasis.' . . . Those 
warriors and hunters singing the hymns tliat are of 
the Church the whole world over, the same old mel- 
odies we sang at St. Sulpice for the Noel! Ah-h!" 
He never spoke of this night without emotion. 

"I have said INIass in Saint Peter's at Rome, in 
fine basilicas in France and in many places — but I 
say to you, this was the most solemn ]\Iass — the most 
grand of all." 

Wlien the INIass was ended, the young priest, so 
happy that he was conscious of no fatigue, dismissed 
the warriors with a glad— 

"Bon Noel! My dear shepherds, go and smoke 
your Christmas calumet and take your rest." 

Then followed the Mass of the Dawn. Now it was 
the women of the camp who came uniting their voices 
in sacred song. The Sacrifice was concluded and the 
women dismissed. 

Father Lacombe, now thoroughly weak, felt his 
head reel with faintness as it did during that awful 
fortnight on tlie prairies, and in blind haste he packed 
awajr the altar fittings and threw himself do^^Ti on 
the buffalo-skins to rest. The warm skins enveloped 
him; the earth welcomed him and breathed repose 
through him. Sleep closed his ej^es. 

No angels watched visibly over the sleeping camp, 
but their message had penetrated to the hearts of the 
Cree warriors. And the promised Peace-to-men-of- 
Good-will had fallen in divine fullness upon Father 



154i FATHER LACOMBE 1867 

Lacombe lying exhausted by the fire on his bed of 
boughs and skins. 

On Sunday night when the last hymn was sung 
in the chapel-tent Father Lacombe would fain say 
good-night to his warriors: he did not want to ex- 
change stories over the pipes that night, for the air 
of his tent was hot and bad, and he stiU felt weak. 
But while the men lingered the doorway of the tent 
was suddenly thrown open and a Metis courier from 
St. Albert stamped in with greetings from that mis- 
sion, and letters that had come by the Company's 
packet from the Red River. 

As the Indians watched Father Lacombe read and 
re-read one paper they saw great joy and anxiety al- 
ternately master his mobile face, and the ready tears 
welled up. He seemed oblivious of all but one letter. 

This was from Bishop Grandin in Rome telling 
him of the condition of their venerable Pontiff at- 
tacked now on every side by enemies. Enclosed with 
this was a copy of the Papal decree convoking the 
twentieth Ecumenical Council. In the midst of his 
cares and humiliations Pius IX had grandly decided 
to hold another of the great Ecxmienical Coimcils of 
the Church, the first of the imposing assemblages 
since the Council of Trent. 

For these reasons smiles and tears were very close 
together on the priest's face. Chief Sweet-Grass, 
who was very fond of the Man-of-the-Beautiful- 
Mind, came quietly near him, and asked what news 
he had that moved him so strongly. Father Lacombe 



1867 FATHER LACOMBE 155 

explained the letters reading from the decree some 
words of the grand chief of the Men-of-Prayer. 

Immediately the warriors pressed forward to see 
it. Father Lacombe pointed out the pontiff's name 
and the heraldic device surmounting the sheet. One 
old man bent and kissed the page. 

"What is the name of the chief of the Men-of- 
Prayer?" Sweet-Grass asked wonderingly. 

"Pius IX is his name. Pius IX!" 

Very gravely Sweet-Grass pursued his enquiries. 

"May I speak his name — even though I am not a 
praying-Indian ?" 

"To be sure you may," Father Lacombe agreed, 
and Sweet-Grass had him repeat it for him until he 
felt he could say it correctly. 

Then the chief stood up among his braves, holding 
the Pope's decree in his own hands ; and he called out 
strongly, solemnly, as if he made an invocation : 

"Pius IX! Pius IX! . . . Listen, all my 
people present — Pius IX! May that name bring us 
good fortune!" 

Then sweeping an arm out over his seated braves: 

"Rise!" he called to them, "and say 'Pius IX!' " 

And they all rose and repeated after him — "Pius 
IX!" 

This scene might have furnished another paragraph 
to Macaulay's admiring study of the Church of 
Rome. For while its Pontiff, the "Little Father of 
the Poor," was being driven to his last redoubt in 
the Vatican — only saved from the Garibaldian forces 



156 FATHER LACOMBE 1867 

two months earlier by an army of men from every 
civilized nation — here in this western wilderness new 
races were enlisting under his banner, and a miser- 
ably clad but valiant soldier of Christ was moved to 
tears at the unlooked-for tribute to his chief. 

In the following year Father Lacombe sent the 
details of the little incident to his early patron, Bishop 
B our get, who was then in Rome. The aged Pontiff, 
profoundly moved by the happening, asked the Bishop 
to convey his blessing to Father Lacombe, his good 
chief and Indians. 



XV 

The year 1868 opened upon Father Lacombe on 
the plains in the camp of the head chief Sweet- 
Grass. In a few weeks he returned to St. Paul de 
Cris, and later went up to Rocky JNIountain House 
to minister to Indians there. 

The time had now arrived to achieve his coup 
d'etat; consequently he called at St. Albert for the 
Sarcee captive. The Sisters who had become very 
strongly attached to Marguerite, as she had been chris- 
tened, pleaded with Father Lacombe to leave her 
with them so that she might never know the hardships 
of camp life again. 

"We love her," they said, "and she seems to be 
happy with us." 

"Yes," said Father Lacombe, "that is all fine! 
But how long will it last? She will get tired of life 
here. Already when I spoke to her in Blackfoot she 
told me she was lonely for her people. . . . And, 
anyway, I must take her home. She is gold — gold 
to me! 

"Her people of the Blackfoot nation are fierce and 
proud. They are my friends, though they do not 
love my teaching as the Crees do. . . . But when 
I bring Marguerite back to them. . . . Ah, that 
is my day!" 

157 



168 FATHER LACOMBE 1868 

Father Lacombe had spoken with discernment. 
The Blaekfeet did love him for his sympathy; they 
admired his courage and daring; more than once the 
chiefs had greeted the praying-man by running their 
hands over his forehead, chest and arms to absorb 
from him into their own bodies some virtue of the 
medicine which made him great. But they wanted 
nothing to do with the religion which had fired him 
to become the man he was. 

From the Blaekfeet trading at the Mountain House 
that spring Father Lacombe had learned something 
of the position of their nation's camp. With this, to- 
gether with Marguerite's knowledge of her people's 
himting-ground and their probable choice of a place 
of encampment, he had little difficulty in finding 
them. 

His party included Alexis, the aged Blackfoot Su- 
zanne and Marguerite. One day as they paused on 
a piece of rolling upland to rest their horses the girl's 
quick eyes caught sight of a big camp on the slope 
of a neighbouring coulee — blots of gray and brown 
against the first delicate green of the prairies. 

Maybe this was the camp of her people, she said. 
. . . Eh, hien, said Father Lacombe, it was well 
to be prepared. Immediately the party pitched 
camp. Alexis was told to raise the Red Cross flag 
on a tent-pole. The Sarcee girl was ordered into the 
women's tent — under no pretext to leave until she was 
called — and then the Generalissimo folded his hands 
and waited. 



1868 FATHER LACOMBE 169 

But not for long: the Indians saw his signal flap- 
ping in the long prairie winds, and promptly recog- 
nized it. The flag in itself was famed among them, the 
man who carried it, revered . . . for had he not 
nursed them through the rongeole and the typhoid 
and stopped the battle with the Crees? Lassoing 
their horses lightly they sprang upon them and rode 
over in a barbaric, half -naked cavalcade to the priest's 
tent. Men and women rode galloping through the 
valley, up the hill, welcoming him with glad cries as 
they drew near. 

"They did not want my religion," says Father La- 
combe simply, "but they liked me. They were my 
friends." 

In the crowd he noticed some whose faces were 
streaked with black paint and their hair cut, in token 
of mourning. This looked promising. He asked 
them whom they mourned? 

"Six moons ago," they said, "your friends, the 
Crees, attacked a camp of our young men, killed 
some of them and carried off one of our young 
women." 

"And did you go to find her?" 

"Her brothers went, but did not get her. They 
carried her too far into the country of the Crees and 
she is dead maybe. We will never see her again!" 

"Never again?" . . . 

The psychological moment had arrived, and the 
dramatic instinct that had planned this seance recog- 
nized the fact. 



160 FATHER LACOMBE 1868 

"Marguerite," he called into the tent. "Come 
here!" 

In a trice their lost girl — active, strong and radi- 
antly glad to look on her people again — emerged 
from the dusky interior. With a searching glance 
through the crowd she ran directly to the arms of her 
mother. The astounded silence was broken with cries 
of joy, and women crowded about the mother who 
now lay silent in her daughter's arms : while the men 
pushed close to Arsous-kitsi-rarpi — The-Man-of-the- 
Good-Heart. 

They touched his hands and face and gown. They 
told him their thanks in fervent language, and they 
shouted his name — Arsous-kitsi-rarpi! till the coulees 
rang. Then with the young men riding ahead as 
couriers Father Lacombe was brought in a savage 
procession to the Sarcee camp, where there were 
songs of triumph and orations by the chiefs. 

Truly, this was his day. "An ineffable moment!" 
he says, and one that gave him more influence among 
these people and spread more desire for his prayer 
than many sermons or visits would have accomplished. 

During this triumphal progress of Father Lacombe 
in the hunting-grounds of the Chinook-kissed south 
the priest of St. Paul found near the mission the 
bodies of two Indians who had perished of hunger. 
The only other item of interest Father Lacombe found 
in the Journal on his return was the record that at 
Easter "the famous old Na Batoche and all his family 
were baptised." 



1868 FATHER LACOMB'E 161 

The items recoi'ded in the Journal of St. Paul for 
the remainder of that summer are pitiful in their reve- 
lation of hardship from hunger. Pere Andre who 
remained in charge during Father Lacombe's trips to 
the plains, could starve with composure, but he could 
not look on cahiilj' at his inability to help the starving 
Indians begging for help, and he counts the days his 
stout-hearted, resourceful confrere is absent. He also 
chronicles in the Journal an interesting incident that 
marked the trip from which Father Lacombe returned 
on Juljr 9. The latter had been spending several 
weeks with the Crees. 

One day when the hunters came in with word that 
the Blackfeet were approaching, the camp was quickly 
put in a state of defence. Pits were dug to conceal 
their persons, the horses were hobbled within the 
camp. Small mounds of stones Avere piled outside 
the camp to shield the warriors. 

At night the camp waited in readiness for attack. 

"At last at half -past eleven, when we were all tired 
waiting," Father Lacombe tells, "I thought it may 
all be a mistake. Ha ! — I take my horse and ride out 
of the camp up the hill. The young men said the 
Blackfeet were hiding in the trees across the valley, 
and the moon was shining full over the hill. 

"Up there I call out — 

"'Hey! Hey! Are you there and wanting to 
fight? Then my Crees are ready for you. Come 
on, and you will see how they can fight. They are 
brave, mj^ Crees, if you come to kill their people. 



162 FATHER LACOMBE 1868 

. . . Come, they are ready. Do not wait till the 
dawn.' . . . 

"Oh, my voice sounded big over the quiet prairie. 
But tliere was no cry; only the echoes answered. 

"I ride back to the camp then, and I laugh. 'Let 
us go to sleep,' I say. 'There is no danger.' " 

The Crees decided to leave a small guard all night, 
and the next day while the young men formed an 
armed escort the band moved its camp north of the 
lake. While there were no further alarms it was dis- 
covered that this one had not been groundless. 

Sixty Blackfeet had designed to attack the camp 
that night. Father Lacombe learned soon afterward 
from Big Eagle, one of their old men. But they 
would not fight when they heard the voice of Arsous- 
kitsi-rarpi, who had been in their own camp at Three 
Ponds. 

That brief bold midnight harangue to the ambushed 
Blackfeet warriors is worth noting. It is a vivid 
illustration of the instinctive art with which Father 
Lacombe's Indian career was lit, as from day to day 
he played on the Indian nature as a musician on his 
harp. 

To Father Lacombe the most important event of 
the year was Bishop Grandin's arrival at St. Albert. 
This marked the elevation of the half-breed colony to 
the dignity of a episcopal see. It also marked a long 
advance from the arrival of Bishop Provencher just 
fifty years before to establish the reign of Christ in 
Rupert's Land. Then there were two priests in the 



1868 FATHER LACOMBE 163 

whole immense territory west of Sault Ste. Marie, 
Now there were three Bishops and close on to one 
hundred missionary priests, nuns and lay brethren. 

Toward the end of August the Bishop with his 
caravan of carts was met at St. Paul by eight priests, 
the Journal notes — by all in fact who were at work 
in the diocese: Fathers Lacombe, Leduc, Remas, 
Vegreville, Moulin, Gaste, Andre, Legoff. 

On October 26th he entered St. Albert escorted by 
a cavalcade of Metis horsemen who went out three 
miles to meet him. He drove in under an arch of 
greenery erected in his honour, while salvos of mus- 
ketry and cries of welcome rang out with an enthu- 
siasm rare in the calm wilderness. Father Lacombe, 
who had hurried ahead to St. Albert to direct this 
demonstration and then returned to Fort Pitt to meet 
the Bishop, had exhausted his own and his confreres' 
resources to make this entry memorable. 

The new Bishop, who had so lately within the Arc- 
tic fringe chinked his own huts with mud, was doubt- 
less fully impressed. The first day he officiated in the 
little chapel, however, he found he must carry him- 
self with discernment in order that his mitre might 
escape being knocked off by the rafters! 

His palace was of logs, sixteen feet by thirty. It 
was uncomfortably crowded, and the diet was not 
select. In a letter to his family one of the mission- 
aries resident at St. Albert then has left a piquant 
description of the external life. It is marked by a 
gentle wit characteristic of the spirit in which the 



164 FATHER LACOMBE 1868 

French missionaries of the early days turned off their 
privations with laughter. 

It however pictures St. Albert at its worst — when 
the mill was not working, and the vegetables were all 
consumed : 

"Eight of us are living in the palace, and we are 
one on top of another. There are seven of us in 
one room which serves at once as a parlour, office, 
carpenter's shop, tailoring-place, etc. A buffalo skin 
stretched on the floor with one or two blankets — 
behold our beds ! Mattresses and sheets are luxuries 
of which we know nothing. We eat bread only on 
feast-days and then in very small quantities. 

"On the other hand we have petnihan, a species of 
pounded fat meat pressed into a leather sack ten or 
twelve months before. We cut off pieces with an 
axe — it is almost as good as a candle! We have also 
meat dried in the sun. It is as hard as leather: but 
with good teeth one finally tears it off. Our beverage 
is tea without sugar. With this not very recherche 
nutrition we nevertheless are looking well. I, espe- 
cially^ — I am taking on flesh in such fashion that they 
call me Canon. . . ." 

The new Bishop speedily attached his priests to 
himself, for he was a man of high principle, unselfish 
and notably amiable. With this he was possessed 
of a zeal for his work so ardent that during the past 
winter in France Louis Veuillot, the prince of French 
journahsts, had said of him — "Cet eveque des neiges 
fait hien comprendre que le froid brule. . . ." 



1868 FATHER LACOMBE 165 

"This bishop of the snows makes one understand 
clearly how frost burns." 

On the 11th of December Father Lacombe left 
once more for the prairies. He experienced no hard- 
ships in finding the Indian camps this year, for with 
all his di-amatic instincts and emotional nature he had 
too strong a vein of practical sense and organising 
powers to make such a mistake twice possible. 

During his stay in the camp of Sweet-Grass he was 
brought to a young warrior who, having his hand 
badly torn in the hunt, had amputated the useless 
member with his hunting knife, binding the stump 
with the cord of the sinew which tied his breech-clout 
about his groins. 

Father Lacombe going to his tent was horror- 
stricken at the sight of the mangled arm. Up as far 
as the shoulder the veins and the flesh had darkened 
with blood poisoning, and at the wrist was a mass of 
inflamed, swollen and corrupt flesh in which the cord 
of deer-sinew was deeply buried. Putrified pieces of 
flesh had already dropped from the sore stump. 

Father Lacombe felt helpless before this, but 
Sweet-Grass was relying upon him, so with a prayer 
for divine assistance he nerved himself to do what he 
could. For a few moments he studied the anatomy 
of his own wrist to avoid cutting into any of the 
principal arteries. Then insisting upon the young 
man turning his head away the priest made a deep 
incision with his razor into the swollen wrist — on, 
down — until he reached the buried cords of sinew. 



166 FATHER LACOMBE 1868 

This he cut and with the aid of two fine sticks 
removed it entirely. With the sudden resultant out- 
flow of blood and matter the hitherto stoical Indian 
groaned pitifully ; but the outcry speedily changed to 
a sigh of relief. 

The onlookers murmured approval, and taking 
heart Father Lacombe bent again to his work. He 
cut away with his razor as completely as he could 
the mortified flesh about the wound and burned what 
remained with a stick of nitrate of silver — one of the 
few medical stuffs supplied to the missionaries and 
traders at that period. 

He smeared the arm and stump with a thick layer 
of the balm-of-Gilead ointment which an old Black- 
foot woman had taught him to prepare; then ordered 
the young man to lie in bed for days, forbidding 
him to eat meat. Dumbly wondering what would be 
the outcome of it all, he sent up fervent prayers that 
the man's life should be spared. For several days 
he visited him thrice daily, renewing the ointment and 
burning the rotten tissue. 

To the delight of the whole camp, and to the sur- 
prise of no one more than Father Lacombe, the young 
hunter soon gave evidence of recovering, and in three 
weeks was convalescent! . . . Father Lacombe 
exclaimed with the great Pare, surgeon to four kings 
— "I dressed his wound; God cured him." 

That winter again Midnight ]\Iass was celebrated 
on the prairies in the house-tent. Father Lacombe 
did not return to St. Paul until late in February. 



1869 FATHER LACOMBE 167 

The St. Paul Journal records Father Lacombe's 
return on February 27th, 1869. One of the horses 
had died during the winter; the one that remained 
was as tlain and jaded as its master. But he was 
satisfied with his latest ministry, exercised for the 
greater part of the time in a camp of almost 2,700 
Crees lodged in 400 tepees. 

Toward Easter he preached an enlivening mission 
for his former proteges, the half-breeds of St. Albert, 
and at its close gave them a rendez\^ous for a certain 
day to tear down his old bridge over the Sturgeon 
and replace it with a new structure — which they com- 
pleted in two days. 

Here again he combined with his spiritual ministry 
vigorous efforts for the material advancement of his 
flock; and as usual in the fields or pulpit he vitahzed 
his followers by the spur of his own splendid energies. 



XVI 

Theke was now being debated at St. Albert a 
question which had already been considered in Feb- 
ruary, when Father Lacombe returned to St. Paul de 
Cris from the prairies and found Bishop Grandin 
and Father Vegreville of Lac la Biche awaiting him. 
It related to the improvement of their freight-trans- 
portation. With the expansion of their missions the 
amount of money paid out yearly to the Company or 
freighters for this purpose was making terrifying 
inroads upon their slim resources. 

As early as 1854 Bishop Tache and his able lieuten- 
ants at Lac la Biche had initiated a movement to 
improve northern transportation by navigating the 
Athabasca (hitherto avoided by the fur-traders as 
too dangerous). This had now been successfully 
accomplished by the missionaries, but there still 
remained a possibility of bettering the transportation 
system to the south. 

As noted in the Oblate Annals, a new method had 
been suggested to Father Lacombe and the Bishop 
by "a certain number of adventurers . . . from 
Benton, a quite new town of the United States built 
near the sources of the Missouri." This method was 
to ship supplies from France to New Orleans and 
thence up the Missouri to Fort Benton. 
168 



1869 FATHER LACOMBE 169 

It was obvious that Father Lacombe was the man 
to examine into the new enterprise, and on April 17th 
the task was formally assigned him by the Diocesan 
Council. 

"Plein de courage et d'audace," he writes in a mem- 
orandum of that trip, he left St. Albert with three 
Metis. Each man rode a sturdy little Indian pony 
and in a cart they had packed their tent and some 
provisions. They soon left the tree-line, and for days 
travelled farther and farther south into the plains. 

The Metis were very careful in choosing and con- 
cealing their encampments each night, for in spite of 
Father Lacombe's assurance of the Blackfeet's 
friendly attitude toward himself, they feared a mid- 
night surprise upon their ponies at least. This was 
a dry season and many creeks were dried. So they 
always carried a small keg of water from camp to 
camp. 

One day when this precaution was neglected night- 
fall found them parched with thirst. Father 
Lacombe, searching about in the dusk, found a 
marshy pool frequented by the buffalo. He brought 
a pail of the ill-smelling fluid to camp, but scorched 
and gripped with thirst as they were all refused to 
do more than moisten their lips with it. 

One Metis suggested that they draw blood from 
the carcass of a buffalo killed that evening. In spite 
of some repugnance they refreshed themselves so, 
but Father Lacombe could not bring himself to it. 
AH night he lay in broken sleep tormented with thirst, 



170 FATHER LACOMBE 1869 

which — at that distance at least — seemed to him more 
difficult to endure than the hunger of his trip to Nose 
HiU. 

At dawn the party spreading out over the plains 
to look for water came upon a small creek. They 
had now reached American territory, as they knew 
by that grim sentinel near the boundary, the Chief 
Mountain — Ninnistakow — recalhng to Father La- 
combe his old friend, Rowand of Fort Edmonton. 

The next day on the banks of the Missouri they 
came to a straggling village of log-cabins. Small 
steamboats lay along the water-front ; fur-traders and 
Indians dawdled here and there on the dusty street. 
The whole aspect of the place was sunny, lazy and 
cheerful. 

As they hesitated enquiringly on the village street 
a French-Canadian servant of the American fur-com- 
pany approached Father Lacombe and offered him 
the hospitahty of his small home. 

Benton then was the home of many dashing fron- 
tiersmen and traders whose names still linger in quaint 
or exciting tales of the old trading-days. I. G. 
Baker's log-store was the largest in the village, but 
among the rough-shirted, big-hearted traders who 
loitered about the sunny streets were Tom Powers 
and the Healeys who later struck gold in Alaska, 
Kaiser — and Harnois, who was to cross Father 
Lacombe's life again — ^Joe Kipp and many another 
who was to find his way across the border into British 
territory. 



1869 FATHER LACOMBE 171 

The news soon went among them that Pere 
Lacombe was in town, and as the Blackfeet had. long 
ago carried his fame across the plains, his arrival cre- 
ated a stir of which the dusty and tired Blackrobe 
was quite unconscious. 

As there was no money in currency along the 
Saskatchewan, Father Lacombe had brought a letter 
of credit from his Bishop to the Jesuit missionaries 
of Montana. Borrowing money for liis fare to the 
mission he went there by stage, only to find that the 
Jesuits had no money either. He refused their invi- 
tation to wait until they could get some from St. 
Louis. 

Instead, he returned to Benton, resolved to go for- 
ward to St. Louis at once, with or without money. 

Two days later he was selling his pony to repay 
what he had borrowed for stage-fare and to renew his 
Metis' provisions. For himself, he was a guest of 
Captain Rae of the Silver Bow, who offered him a 
free passage to St. Louis. He was also the owner of 
a well-fiUed purse, made up for him by the Healeys 
and their friends in Benton. 

The Silver Bow made slow progress down the 
river, because as "the traveller from the British pos- 
sessions" recalls — "We were continually slowing 
down or running aground." Tree-trunks and sand- 
bars frequently blocked the current. 

"We did not travel by night for fear of accident in 
the shallows; the boat was tied up to the bank like 
a broncho. We passed the time talking, mostly in 



172 FATHER LACOMBE 1869 

English, of the experiences of each one." But their 
finest recreation was watching herds of buffalo come 
crashing through the trees on the river-bank and pre- 
cipitate themselves into the current. 

"Imagine our boat," Father Lacombe writes in 
vivid remembrance, "steaming into the midst of the 
bison crazed by the shrieks and whistling of the steam- 
engine, and the reports of rifles and revolvers. Im- 
agine the tumult caused by such encoimters! The 
water was sometimes red with blood, which flowed in 
streams from the bodies of the poor victims massacred 
only for the pleasure of killing them." 

The night before the steamer reached St. Louis 
Father Lacombe's generous travelhng-companions, 
miners from the new gold-fields, surprised him with a 
purse of over one hundred dollars. This with what 
the generous Benton traders had given him left him 
master of $300. He felt himself a prairie-Croesus. 

He was now in St. Louis, the birthplace of his 
friend Brazeau the Blackfoot interpreter at Fort 
Edmonton. He promptly made his way to the Uni- 
versity, but paused outside its hospitable entrance, 
as though struck by his own temerity in thus calmly 
claiming lodging in what seemed to him magnificence 
embodied in masonry. 

The massive portal and muUioned windows of the 
College were impressive to the prairie visitor to whom 
for a score of years the measure of architectural splen- 
dour had been the Big House at Fort Edmonton with 
its two score of glass windows. Glass! not parch- 



1869 FATHER LACOMBE 173 

ment, let it be noted. Was it possible, lie asked him- 
self, that he had thirsted on the plains for water and 
watched the miners slaughter buffalo only a few days 
before ? 

A warm reception soon made the northerner thor- 
oughly at home. He even found a close link between 
the University's dignified atmosphere and his own 
smoky house-tent. . . . For that Pere de Smet 
who had been a professor here forty years before, was 
the same who at Fort Edmonton in 1845 laid upon 
Father Thibault the mission of Christianizing the 
Blackfeet — and it was Father Lacombe himself who 
had eventualljr undertaken that mission. 

Archbishop Kenrick received the Canadian voya- 
geur hospitably on several occasions, and his whole 
stay at St. Louis was finely enjoyable. But from 
his own observations and on the advice of the Ai'ch- 
bishop he resolved before he left to report to Bishop 
Grandin against any change being made from the 
Red River route to the ]\Iissouri. 

Amply supplied with funds now he decided to go 
on to Canada before returning. His father had died 
the year before, and his heart urged him to go and 
see his mother again. 

Entering the Palace in ]\Iontreal unheralded some 
days later he was greeted with heartwhole dehght by 
the gentle Bourget. Others hurried to welcome him, 
and coaxed for stories of the adventures and achieve- 
ments of the "petite sauvage Albert." 

He first looked into the circumstances and health 



174 FATHER LACOMBE 1870 

of his good old mother at St. Sulpice. Her son 
Gaspard was still wandering with the world for his 
pillow. There remained to Madame Lacombe near 
the old home a married daughter, another teaching 
school and her youngest child, Christine. The latter 
had developed into a bright helpful girl, and mindful 
of the missions' need of teachers her brother invited 
Christine to come west with him and teach. 

Christine readily consented; and it was arranged 
that the mother should spend the rest of her days 
as a paying guest at the Grey Nuns' convent in 
Montreal. This was Madame Lacombe's own desire. 
A few months later, dissatisfied with even that amount 
of the atmosphere of a city which penetrates a con- 
vent, the brave old mother of the missionary, vrithout 
informing him of her discontent, had friends arrange 
for her entrance again as a paying guest into the home- 
like convent of L'Assumption not far from St. Sul- 
pice. Here she lived content. 

On his return west with his sister Father Lacombe 
placed her in charge of a kindly Canadian woman at 
St. Paul de Cris, with whom she remained a few 
months before going to Lac la Biche to teach. As 
for himself, when he had reported on the Mississippi 
route to the Bishop, he resvmied his ministry on the 
plains. 

Shortly after the New Year he journeyed up by 
dog-sleigh to Rocky Mountain House to meet the 
Blackfeet Indians there. As chance had it, Jack 
Matheson, a young trader from the Red River, was 



1870 FATHER LACOMBE 175 

going up to tlie JNIountain House and he proved an 
interesting travelling-companion. For this lusty 
young giant from the Red River, grandson of John 
Pritchard the private secretary of Lord Selkirk, was 
brimming over with gay spirits, with lore of the 
hunter's world and tales of the early settlement of 
the Red River. 

Jack Matheson was himself to come in time 
through many wanderings and a life of much colour 
to be an Indian missionary in the Church of England. 
But on that trip behind the dogs to JNIountain House 
there was little thought of prayer or preaching in the 
rollicking young trader's head. 

Disappointed in not finding the Indians at the post. 
Father Lacombe took a young Piegan as guide, and 
set out on an arduous trip in search of the tribes. 
They suffered from lack of fuel, heavy snow-storms 
and snow-bhndness, finally being directed to the 
camps b)'- a luckless group of Blackfeet who were 
murdered a few days later bj^ a hostile band. 

"Before these poor people had separated from 
me, I attempted to turn them back from the direction 
in wliich they were travelling: I coaxed them to come 
with me, but they were deaf to my invitation. It 
seems as though I had some presentiment of evil 
. . ." ^ wrote Father Lacombe. 

"I could not remain more than three weeks at this 
camp. I occupied all my time in teaching them 

1 Letter of May 13th, 1870, from Father Lacombe to his Superior- 
General, published in Annals of Oblates. 



176 FATHER LACOMBE 1870 

prayers, the singing of hymns, the catechism and par- 
ticularly in making further studies of the language. 

"You will easily understand what trials I had in 
doing this : to grasp the sounds and fix them in writ- 
ing, finding the meaning, discovering the grammatical 
rules; this is no little affair. Nevertheless, I made a 
goodly number of discoveries in a short time, and I 
was happy in the progress which with God's help I 
had made. 

"The Indians on their part showed themselves very 
wilHng — even eager to know something of rehgion. 

"When the time came for me to return home I set 
out with fifteen families who wished to accompany me 
to the Rocky Mountain House. After several days 
passed together at the Fort, I parted from them with 
regret, to return to St. Albert. But before having 
the pleasure of embracing my dear confreres there my 
heart was torn with a painful spectacle. 

"At some distance from the Saskatchewan River, 
as I travelled along the trail with my men, I came 
upon some Indians who ran to me weeping. They 
had been despoiled of everything and they carried 
two of their number who were also wounded. They 
were of the Blackfoot nation and were the only sur- 
vivors of the group attacked by the Cree-Assina- 
boines near Fort Edmonton, eight miles from St. 
Albert. They had not eaten anything for three days : 
they were floundering along almost barefoot in the 
slush and ice. 

"Poor unfortunates ! I could not restrain my tears 



1870 FATHER LACOMBE 177 

at the sight of such misery. But that would not suf- 
fice; I had to give them some help. I distributed 
among them what remained of my provisions; I 
tended the wounds of the injured, gave them some- 
thing to wear and then lent them my two horses. 

"For myself, I had to go afoot, but I had only a 
few miles more to make. . . ." 

The miserable Blackfeet who met Father Lacombe 
were the survivors of a small trading party attacked 
by ambushed Crees as they mounted the south bank 
of the river opposite Fort Edmonton. Seven of 
their number were brutally killed and two wounded. 
The survivors had fled for their lives leaving their 
goods behind them. 

Their tribe inmiediatel)'- sought revenge. One 
night, before Father Lacombe left St. Albert for St. 
Paul, a courier from the Fort announced that a war- 
party of seven himdred Blackfeet was marching on 
Edmonton. 

"The Father purposed to leave at dawn for the 
Fort to aid in averting this misfortune, but toward 
midnight a fresh courier arrived, and he departed 
immediately. . . ." ^ 

1 Letter of Father Leduc to Superior-General of the Oblates, Decem- 
ber 22, 1870. 



XVII 

A BAND of Crees employed in cutting cordwood 
had first brought word of the revenge-party to the 
Chief Factor. They hurried to their tepees by the 
Fort, and decked themselves for battle with vivid 
streaks of vermihon. 

Chief Factor Christie ordered every one within the 
stockade and the gates closed. Malcolm Groat hur- 
riedly crossed some traders from the south bank. 
The cannons in the bastions were primed and every 
man held himself ready to defend their stronghold. 

A flash of humour reheved the anxiety when 
Christie, fastening on the Chief Factor's ceremonial 
sword-belt and sword, found that in days of peace he 
had so put on flesh the belt was uncomfortably tight. 

Malcohn Groat and Harrison Young came to his 
aid in girding his solid form vsdth the outgrown belt, 
and the pinching and pressing process was rich in 
mirth for the onlookers. 

As we have seen, Christie sent a messenger gallop- 
ing to St. Albert for Father Lacombe and some of 
his Metis. Within the courtyard painted Indians and 
anxious whites did what they could to pass the unpleas- 
ant hours of waiting. . . . The Blackfeet arrived 
before dusk and lay in ambush among the trees on 
178 



1870 FATHER LACOMBE 179 

the south bank. They announced their arrival and 
their intentions by repeated firing upon the Fort. 

The bullets whizzed against the stockade; a few 
found their way over it into the courtyard, but their 
force was spent. With nightfall the real danger 
came, and tlie men in the Fort strained their hearing 
for signs of life from the ambushed Blackfeet. 

Past midnight the trampling of horses' hoofs was 
heard along the St. Albert trail, and in a few moments 
Father Lacombe with thirty armed Metis hunters 
knocked on the rear gate for admission. Their horses 
were speedily corralled in the stable-yard within the 
stockade, while some of the Metis were sent up to 
the gallery and bastions to man these with the handful 
of traders and servants already there. 

The firing had been discontinued, but those on 
watch feared that under cover of the darkness the 
Blackfeet would swim across the Saskatchewan, lurk 
in the low brushwood by the bank, and from there 
creep unobsei*ved to the stockade to fire it. This was 
the Indian's most effective method of atttacking a 
Fort, and just such an undertaking as had destroyed 
Old Bow Fort decades earlier. 

Father Lacombe, who never carried a rifle, felt his 
defence must be of another sort. Disregarding the 
order for all to remain inside the stockade, he went 
boldly out on the meadows around the Fort calling 
on the enemy in what Blackfoot he could muster. 
He asked them to fire no more upon the Fort, for 
he and the other white men were their friends. 



180 FATHER LACOMBE 1870 

He — Arsous-kitsi-rarpi — who had so lately come 
from camps of their people ; who had given all he had 
to their wounded kinsfolk — assured them now that 
the Company was indignant with the Crees who had 
treacherously fallen upon their people. He de- 
manded of the ambushed Indians that they depart 
in peace. 

His absolute lack of fear for his own safety and 
his anxiety to pacify the Blackfeet came close 
to bringing disaster on himself. In the southwest 
bastion beside Malcohn Groat was stationed Donald 
McDonald, a new clerk who had narrowly escaped 
with his life from a Blackfoot's rifle at Fort Carleton 
not long before. 

When Father Lacombe, crying out his friendly 
plea, came beneath this bastion — ^the closest to the 
enemy's encampment — Macdonald's ear caught the 
strenuous shouts in Blackfoot. 

He recognized the language without its meaning; 
guided by the voice he took aim with his rifle . . . 
and would have fired, had not Groat and a Metis 
standing near begged him to desist. 

They assured him the voice belonged to Lacombe — 
Pere Lacombe. . . . Even if he were new to 
Edmonton, didn't he know that voice? 

The priest, meanwhile, imaware of his narrow 
escape, continued his way arovmd the Fort calling out 
his message of peace. 

Up in the bastions and sentinel's gallery aU was 
silent — as still as the war-encampment across the 



1870 FATHER LACOMBE 181 

river. They waited for some response to Father 
Lacombe's plea. There was none verbally, but when 
dawn came it was found that the Blackf eet had quietly 
foregone the attack and pitched off for the prairies. 

Early in the spring of 1870 Father Lacombe in 
compliance with a request of Bishop Faraud went 
up to Fort Dunvegan to visit Father Tissier. The 
journey of over 1,000 miles, attended by unusual 
hardships and illness, was undertaken solely with this 
object of fraternal charity ; as in the five j^ears Father 
Tissier was stationed there he had not seen a brother- 
priest and had endured much in the performance of 
his ministry. 

Father Lacombe travelled by pack-horse and canoe, 
with one guide most of the way, by the Athabasca 
and Lesser Slave Lake. 

The trying difficulties of the journey were light- 
heartedly put behind him when he saw the welcoming 
form of his confrere hurry to meet him on the banks 
of the Peace. Father Tissier was still suffering from 
the effects of a journey to Wolverine Point during 
the past winter, when he had both feet frozen and for 
six weeks lay iU in an Indian tepee sharing the semi- 
starvation of his hosts. 

On his return to Lesser Slave Lake Father La- 
combe rallied the JNIetis of that post about him, and 
began the erection of a permanent mission-house at 
Stony Point. 

From the lake he continued down the Little Slave, 
the Athabasca and La Biche Rivers to Lac la Biche, 



183 FATHER LACOMBE 1870 

where he foiind his little sister Christine teaching 
school and striving to acquire a taste for dried meat 
and fish, the only food she had. 

But he had no time for brotherly solicitude. Ter- 
rifying news awaited him: his Indians were attacked 
with a strange fatal sickness. He did not pause for 
rest, but hurried his borrowed pony along the St. 
Paul trail to the urging of this message: "Your In- 
dians are dying like flies; and, running away from 
the sickness, they die along the trail." 

The epidemic, which started early in July, had been 
carried by Metis from some infected Blackfeet. 
These in turn had taken the contagion from Indians 
and traders of the Missouri. An old Indian at St. 
Paul assured Father Lacombe the disease was small- 
pox, because sixty years before they had it in the 
country and it ravaged their camps in the same way. 

Father Lacombe soon found himself in the thick 
of the epidemic. The only nourishment he could give 
the sick was bouillon made of dried meat, and they 
drank eagerly, for they were thirsty with a great 
fever-thirst. 

Sometimes he was occupied until midnight with the 
sick. The hour before sunrise was the time taken to 
bury the dead. Then Father Lacombe would caU 
the young men to help him, warning them that if 
the bodies were not buried every one would catch the 
disease. 

Meanwhile up at Victoria the Rev. George 
McDougall, the Methodist minister who had come 



1870 FATHER LACOMBE 183 

into the countiy eight years earher, was devotedlj' 
helping the Indians around his mission to make a 
valiant battle against the plague, until two of his own 
children succumbed to the disease. 

At St. Albert the battle was being fought with 
such reckless devotion by four Oblates — Fathers 
Leduc and Bourgine, Brothers Doucet and Blanchet 
— that they were all in turn stricken with the disease. 

In the midst of Bishop Grandin's work with the 
stricken Indians near Fort Carlton he received a note 
from Father Laconibe on the prairies. It was pen- 
cilled on ragged brown paper: 

"My Lord, I am in the midst of the dead and dying, and 
am now hurrying to St. Albert where our own men are 
overcome by the disease. I fear there is not even one priest 
there able to assist the dying." 

Father Lacombe's arrival at St. Albert was timely. 
Father Bourgine was down with the disease; Father 
Leduc was recovering, though marked for his life- 
time with the honourable scars of this year's service. 
Practically the whole settlement was affected and only 
two or three of the school-children were able to be 
about. 

In the Annals of the Oblates we read in a letter 
from Father Leduc, December, 1870: 

". . . Father Lacombe was again near St. Paul 
in the midst of the dead and the dying. When he 
heard of our distressing condition, he passed the night 
administering the sacraments to those Indians who 



184 FATHER LACOMBE 1870 

were in danger of death, then flew to our assistance. 
This act of fraternal charity moved me to tears; I 
could not refrain from weeping as I threw myself 
into the arms of this good Father, who arrived so 
opportunely to help us through our difficulties." 

When his confreres had recovered Father Lacombe 
hastened to return to the prairie and like Father 
Andre, who also spent the summer among the In- 
dians, he had many gruesome experiences during the 
epidemic. For the numerous graves he dug his only 
implements were knives and axes, the clay being 
scooped out with his hands or improvised wooden 
scoops. Sometimes ten or twelve bodies were placed 
in one grave, carried there from the tepees in 
blankets. 

About thirty or more encampments on the prairies 
were affected and there were from twenty-five to forty 
families in each. Father Lacombe found his way 
to most of these camps, performing the same painful 
duties at each. 

One morning when the young men were aiding him 
in the bvirials Father Lacombe sent them back for 
the bodies of two children, which he had laid aside 
and covered with boughs the previous night. The 
men went, but the bodies of the little ones were gone. 
The dogs had already been there; only the torn 
remains were found. 

Father Lacombe heard one old man mom*ning 
tragically over this: 



1870 FATHER LACOMBE 185 

"Great Father," he kept repeating audibly, "is it 
possible that you let us die with this horrible disease? 
— and then we are eaten by dogs?" 

Even Father Lacombe's doughty heart found here 
its limits of endurance and power to console. 

"I could not say a word to comfort him," he says, 
"I could not speak. It was too tragic. What could 
be said?" 

Instead he took his extra shirt and socks and bits 
of cotton out of the dunnage-sack that served as his 
portmanteau, and went out himself to the repulsive 
task of burying the torn remains. 

The only precaution taken against the disease by 
Father Lacombe was to keep a quill with camphor 
in his mouth. He did not fear the disease for him- 
self; he was too busy thinking of others. But one 
evening after his rounds from tepee to tepee he felt 
so deathly ill he told himself his hour had come. With 
his inherent belief in the efficiency of action he fought 
the nausea by drinking painkiller and taking exercise 
until he was ready to fall asleep from exhaustion. 
The next morning the ailment, whatever it was, had 
disappeared. 

Before the close of September the epidemic was 
over. Father Lacombe estimated that over 2,500 
Crees died. Others place the nvmiber of deaths 
among the Crees and Blackfeet as well over 3,000. 
It is impossible to obtain any very accurate figures. 

At St. Albert most of the Indian children in the 



186 FATHER LACOMBE 1870 

Grey Nxins' orphanage died, as well as many Metis 
and Indians. In every camp on the plains someone 
was mourned. 

To-day, 1870 is a year from which Old-Timers on 
the Saskatchewan date modern events, as previously 
along the Red River all dated from 1852, the year of 
the Great Flood. 



XVIII 

The great progress made by Christianity this sum- 
mer brought consolation to the Oblates after the 
scourge of smallpox had spent its virulence. Their 
absolute devotion to the Indian had not gone unre- 
warded. The pagan warriors were moved by the 
impretentious heroism of the priests: it had shamed 
their own fear. The attitude of their dying friends 
enjoying religious consolation also had its effect. 

An item in the Journal of St. Paul records 2,000 
baptisms of adults and children on the plains that 
summer. Among the many conversions was that of 
Papaskis (Grasshopper), a noted medicine-man, who 
embraced Christianity when on his prayer to the 
Christian God his daughter, the wife of Chief Ermine- 
Skin,^ was cured. 

But the conversion that delighted Father Lacombe 
most was that of his friend, Sweet-Grass, the bravest 
and most esteemed among the Cree warriors — ^the 
Head-Chief of the whole nation of Crees. For many 
years the Little Chief had said, "Leave me alone; I 
will tell you when my time has come." 

Now toward the close of the epidemic Father 
Lacombe, calling the stronger Indians to prayer one 

1 This Chief and his wife still live at Ermine Skin's reserve, south 
(of Edmonton. 

187 



188 FATHER LACOMBE 1870 

evening, was astounded to see Sweet-Grass and sev- 
eral of his pagan warriors enter and kneel with the 
rest. 

After the prayer and hymn were concluded, Sweet- 
Grass, mindful of a chief's privilege of oratory, rose 
and asked if he might speak. . . . 

"My relatives, my friends," he said. "You are sur- 
prised to see me here. You have known me as a 
strong follower of the beliefs of our fathers. I have 
led in the medicine-feasts. To-day, in the presence 
of the Great Spirit and before our friend Kamiyo- 
atchahwe, I turn away from all that. It is past, 
and I will hear the teachings of the Man-of- 
Prayer." 

Then falling on his knees beside Father Lacombe, 
he asked his friend to make the Sign of the Cross on 
him. 

The priest took the hand of Sweet-Grass, made the 
mystic Sign on the chief, and said solemnly: 

"In the Name of the Father — and of the Son — 
and of the Holy Ghost, I receive you, brave chief 
of the Crees." 

Father Lacombe then gave some hours daily to the 
instruction of Sweet-Grass and the band of followers 
he was bringing into the Fold. 

One evening when night -prayer was finished and 
Father Lacombe sat outside his tent, smoking and 
chatting in Cree with the older men, their causerie 
was broken by Sweet-Grass enquiring abruptly of 
Father Lacombe : 



1870 FATHER LACOMBE 189 

"Are you going to baptise me soon?" 

"The whole camp knows I have made you ready 
for that." 

"But perhaps you would not do it, if you knew 
Avhat a man I am and what evil I once did." 

For answer Father Lacombe slipped his crucifix 
from his belt and looking on it said : 

"He became ]\Ian and died on the cross for your 
salvation: He came to the world to save sinners. If 
you are sorry for your sins He will pardon you all — 
to the greatest — and the waters of Baptism shall wash 
away all the sins of yom* past hfe." 

Sweet-Grass shook his head regretfully. 

"Hah! . . ." 

That Indian exclamation can breathe alike the 
deepest regret or the keenest triumph. 

"I will tell you about one time of my past life ; you 
will judge, and some of the old men here will know 
that I speak the truth." 

No one spoke, and for a long time the evening 
silence — filled with the peace that had come again to 
the afflicted camp — was broken only by the low and 
pleasant voice of Sweet-Grass. 

He told of his despised youth as a captive among 
the Crees. Friendless, neglected and taunted with 
his small stature the warriors would have nothing to 
do with him. He-Who-Has-Xo-Name, they called 
him — until one night he slipped from camp, went far 
and alone on foot into the south country, and 
returned with one Blackfoot scalp and forty-two 



190 FATHER LACOMBE 1870 

ponies. Then amid shouts of triumph he held aloft 
a tuft of sweet-grass dipped in the blood of the dead 
Blackfoot-Councillor. An old man cried out "Sweet- 
Grass! Sweet-Grass!" — and the whole camp took 
up the name. 

"Sweet-Grass!" 

So he had won a name; he became a brave, a great 
chief; but his soul was haunted yet by the thought 
of the aged Councillor. 

Father Lacombe heard his story. It was not told 
with bravado, but with regret. His lonely childhood 
had developed in Sweet-Grass a sensitiveness and fine- 
ness of thought unusual in the Indian. 

The wanton murder of an unoffending old man — 
when in the act of worshipping the Great Spirit in 
His sjonbol the Sun — had weighed on the mind of 
Sweet-Grass for years. He loathed the crime; the 
thought of it had held him back from a Religion 
of Love which taught "Thou shalt not kill!" He 
feared the missionaries would reject him when they 
knew all. 

Now with his story told he found no judge, but 
a disciple of the all-comprehending Christ, the Man 
of Sorrows, who had said: 

"Let him who is without sin cast the first stone!" 

A few days later Sweet-Grass was baptised, receiv- 
ing the Christian name of Abraham, and his marriage 
was blessed by Father Lacombe. 

Two years later the latter took Sweet-Grass with 
him to Saint Boniface and in the Cathedral there this 



1870 FATHER LACOMBE 191 

esteemed chief was confirmed by the chief of the 
Backrobes in the West. 

In November, 1870, Father Lacombe with Father 
Scollen went by dog-train from St. Albert to Rocky 
Mountain House and spent the winter there collect- 
ing and revising notes he had made for his Cree dic- 
tionary and grammar. In his many goings and com- 
ings, by the firelight in Indian tepees or log missions, 
he had contrived with persistent labour to make 
volimiinous notes on the Cree language. They were 
not always of the most accurate, but they were the 
best he could obtain. 

He now put these in shape, as Bishop Grandin 
wanted to have them printed. At the Bishop's 
request also he undertook to write a score of sermons 
in Cree, embodying the whole Christian doctrine. 

Early in December his work was agreeably inter- 
rupted by the visit of a "young Irishman,^ an officer 
in the British Army — a pleasant, fine-looking man," 
Father Lacombe recalls, "who passed several days 
with me. I enjoyed his company, and on the eighth 
of December he served my Mass at Rocky Mountain 
House." 

Butler's impression of Father Lacombe is clearly 
conveyed in his recent work — "The Light of the 
West" — where he says : 

1 This was Captain Butler — the late General Sir William Butler, hon- 
oured veteran of many campaigns in Africa and India. His book, 
"The Great Lone Land," a classic of Western literature, was published 
as a result of this trip, which he was making as a Commissioner of the 
Canadian Government to report on the conditions of the Territories, 



192 FATHER LACOMBE 1871 

"In the winter of 1870 I met at Rocky Moimtain 
House — a post of the Hudson's Bay Company — 
Pere Lacombe. He had lived with the Blackfeet 
and the Cree Indians for many years, and I enjoyed 
more than I can say Hstening to his stories of adven- 
ture with these wild men of the plains. The thing 
that left most lasting impression on my mind was 
his intense love and devotion to these poor wandering 
and warring people — ^his entire sympathy for them. 

"He had literally lived with them, sharing their 
food and their fortunes and the everlasting dangers 
of their lives. He watched and tended their sick, 
buried their dead and healed the wounded in their 
battles. No other man but Father Lacombe could 
pass from one hostile camp to another — suspected 
nowhere, welcomed everywhere; carrying, as it were, 
the 'truce of God' with him wherever he went." 

While Father Lacombe at Rocky Mountain House 
had withdrawn himself from his picturesque mission 
ambulante and was studiously at work upon his book, 
cataclysmic events were shaking the nations of the 
Old World. Marvellous as it may seem these were 
conspiring to take the unknown Oblate missionary 
away from the plains and the tepees. They were 
going to place him in a field whose hmits should out- 
run all Canada. 

Perhaps Bishop Grandin in his sentinel outlook 
upon the needs of his diocese was the one instrument 
directly shaping Father Lacombe's course; but the 
causes were more remote. These western missions 




MAP 

THE FIELD or 

€P»» ACTIVITIES <-J^ 

ISS2 to 1S72 



3EB^S 



194 FATHER LACOMBE 1871 

had up to now been maintained by the gifts of friends 
in France and by the ahns of the Council of the 
Propagation of the Faith — the funds of this chari- 
table society being mainly contributed by the French 
race. 

But France was now upset by the losses of the 
Franco-Prussian war, and Pope Pius IX was the 
subject of most persistent and disastrous attacks. 
The administrative forces of the Church, confronted 
with such problems at the very centre, had httle time 
or means for these remote missions of the west. The 
future looked almost as dark as in 1849, when the 
Superior-General of the Oblates decided to recall his 
men from the west, until the touching plea of young 
Alexandre Tache caused him to change his mind. 

To add to their distress, the western missionaries 
experienced an unpleasantness that is one of the inev- 
itable results of the world's pitiful division of creeds. 
Some of the non-Catholic traders and a couple of 
other missionaries took advantage — perhaps naturally 
— of the others' weakness to tell the Indians that the 
Chief of the Blackrobes was now a prisoner; that 
their religion had been humbled and they would them- 
selves be recalled. 

This spread among the Indians, and some un- 
friendly spirits among them taunted the poor priests 
repeatedly. But they were not without sympathy 
among their friends: and Father Lacombe recalls 
with tender amusement the martial proclamation of 
Sweet-Grass that if the Pope's captors sent traders 



1571 FATHER LACOMBE 195 

among tJiem his Avarriors would not give them their 
fm's: thej' would fight the rascals! 

The missionaries' condition this year is referred 
to with feeling in a letter ^ written by Father La- 
combe at St. Albert on INIay 20, 1871, to a member 
of the Oblate Order in IMontreal. 

He is appealing to the Canadian House to secure 
aid for the missions, since nothing can be expected 
from France. He repeats the taunts they have lately 
had flung at them on the Saskatchewan, and adds: 

"For my part, and I can say the same for my 
brethren of Saskatchewan and the north, we will die 
of hardships and privations before we will abandon 
our Christians and our poor catechumens. Already 
for a long time I have led the life of the Indians, and 
the greater part of each year I have been at their 
mercy; this will not then be anything new for me. 
Provided I have what is necessary to offer the Holy 
Sacrifice I do not ask anji:hing else." 

He announces in this letter his intention to spend 
the entire smnmer on the prairies with the Crees and 
Blackfeet. 

The latter, he states, are in an alarming condition, 
being demoralised by American whiskey-traders who 
are bringing in liquor from Fort Benton. 

"Since last autumn," he whites, "the process of 
demorahsation has, alas! made very considerable 
progress: the disorders of all kinds which have taken 
place among the savages and these miserable traders 

1 Annals of Oblates. 



196 FATHER LACOMBE 1871 

of rum are frightful. We have done our best to 
inform the American Government of these ■unhappy 
infringements of its laws; while on the other side the 
Government of the Red River has made a very severe 
law prohibiting intoxicating liquors throughout these 
territories. But while we await the coming of some 
impressive force ^ to compel the fulfilment of this wise 
law, we suffer unceasingly." 

He goes on to cite an instance of which word was 
brought during the winter to Mountain House. 

"While more than two hundred lodges of the 
Piegans and Bloods were drinking with the Americans 
on the Belly River last October a war-party of Crees 
composed of two hundred and fifty men fell upon 
them through the night; but the Piegans, although 
taken unprepared, did not let themselves be beaten. 
The Crees were almost all killed by those whom they 
had ventured to attack . . ."a result which was 
perhaps due to the repeating rifles supplied to the 
southern tribes by the Americans. 

Father Lacombe left for the prairies very soon 
after the writing of this letter, for he was anxious 
to reach and bring into the Christian fold all those 
bands on the plains that were still pagan. With him 
he took his famous half-breed, Alexis Cardinal, who 
had continued to be the most faithful of servitors 

1 The representations of Father Lacombe and others resulted a few 
years later in the organization of the now-famous force of Mounted 
Police. 



1871 FATHER LACOMBE 197 

and religious to the degree of eccentricitj'. Alexis' 
oddities would not permit of Father Lacombe receiv- 
ing him into the Oi'der as a lay-brother. He 
regarded himself as a missionary, however, and wore 
a semi-clerical gown of black stroud, made by a half- 
breed woman on his own instructions. 

Without accident and without hardship from 
hunger these two in 1871 ranged far and wide over 
the plains Ij'ing south of Edmonton along the Red 
Deer River, the Battle River and well into the coun- 
try of the Blackfeet. 

In some of the Cree camps visited were already 
many Christians, and in each the missionary spent 
about two weeks while he instructed the people and 
fulfilled his ministry generallj\ He baptized several 
children and some adults who had been catechumens 
and were already prepared. 

In a few cases he performed the marriage cere- 
monj^ blessing the unions of "men of reputation" 
upon whom he felt he could relj^ to keep their word 
to reject polygamous practices. Several warriors 
who were willing to accept Christianity had rebelled 
at a form of marriage which required them to bind 
themselves to one woman for life. 

"If we marry, and find we cannot agree, we may 
want to leave each other. Then what wiU we do?" 
thejr argued. 

That was to the Indian the one great drawback 
in this strange and pleasant Christian religion: its 



198 FATHER LACOMBE 1871 

Men-of -Prayer not only objected to a brave having 
two or three wives — in whom he sometimes took even 
more pride as a man of means than in his band of 
horses; but they insisted that taking one woman 
he should cleave to that one through good and bad 
seasons and good and bad tempers. 

Truly there were more things in this Christian 
philosophy than ever chief or warrior among them 
had ever dreamt of before! 

One such protest Father Lacombe recalls in detail. 
A man of middle-age, who had embraced the Chris- 
tian religion, continued to hve with Margaret, a 
Christian Cree and the mother of Ms children; but 
he refused to bind himself to her by any such solemn 
promise as the marriage ceremony required. This 
was all the more strange because he had a high 
regard for Margaret and had never taken any other 
wife. 

The woman had for some time been anxious to be 
married according to Christian rites; the man held 
back. Finally Father Lacombe told William if he 
did not make up his mind during that visit to the 
camp, he would not permit him to enter the House 
of Prayer. Wilham thereupon consented to be mar- 
ried next day. 

Next morning, when Father Lacombe threw open 
the skin doors of his tent to invite the people to Mass, 
he found William and Margaret with two witnesses 
sitting there stoically waiting. The four rose and 
stood before him on the prairie. Father Lacombe 



1871 FATHER LACOMBE 199 

again spoke briefly upon the duties of marriage. 
When finally he declared they should cherish each 
other till death parted them, the man was visibly 
excited, 

"At last," says Father Lacombe, "I said — 'Wil- 
ham, do you take this woman, Margaret, to be j-our 
wife forever ?' — and oh, that sound so terrible ! . . . 
you cannot know how ... in the ears of the 
Indian man. He say quickly to me, 

" 'Stop, Father, that's all fine for you to say those 
words, for you will not have the trouble with her. 
That's all fine . , . that you push me so for 
marry her: but if she give me so much trouble all 
these years when she know I can put her away any 
time — ^what will she do when she knows I cannot put 
her away?' 

"I told him that she would be a good Christian 
wife, as she had just promised, and will give him no 
trouble. . . . But he talk on . . . and as I 
wait I get cross — ^myself — and I say sternly to her — 

" 'Well, jN'Iargaret, you go leave him. You must 
separate then. You leave him to make his own 
moccasins, to cook his meals, to potind his pemmican. 
Yes, Margaret, you go!' 

"William softened — as I know he would — at that 
thought of separation, for jNIargaret was a smart, 
good woman, and he say quickly again: 

" 'No, I do not want that. I have said I will marry 
her, and I will. But I want to speak my mind first 
about what trouble she mav make for me.' " 



200 FATHER LACOMBE 1871 

So the ceremony went on. And Father Lacombe 
was always happy to know later that William and 
Margaret lived together as contented as before, until 
death took one away. 



XIX 

Father Lacombe spent part of the summer of 
1871 with the Blackfeet Indians in the heart of their 
own country. The camps were pleasantly pitched, 
and buffalo were abundant in the valley. The time 
was favourable for teaching Christianity. 

Unaware that Bishop Grandin was then planning 
a new course for him, he was working out in his own 
mind a distinct campaign for himself: just as ten 
years earlier he planned the establishment of St. 
Albert and St. Paul de Cris. 

These missions were now in touch with civihzation ; 
he could leave them to the younger priests; for him- 
self — with his partial knowledge of the Blackfoot 
tongue and warm friendship for the race — he would 
select the mission of converting the Blackfeet. 

Up to this time he had been their only missionary, 
and his ministry had been necessarily interrupted. 
Now he felt he must devote himself entirely to them. 
The very difficulties of the work appealed to his high 
spirit. He alreadj?^ saw in his dreams a prosperous 
Blackfoot mission on the Bow River. He would con- 
secrate it to Our Lady of Peace as a token of the 
pledge his Blackfeet must give him to cease warring 
upon their old enemies, the Crees. 

In a campaign of instruction that summer. Father 
201 



202 FATHER LACOMBE 1871 

Lacombe found that his Blackfeet were not docile 
and appreciative as his Cree neophytes had been. 
One afternoon along the Bow, when he had tired of 
the Indians' camp and company, he walked away 
by the river to read the day's office in his breviary, 
and to pray there in quietness. 

After a time of this pleasant retirement he looked 
up to see two men standing near. 

"What do you want?" he asked, with a touch of 
impatience. 

"We watch you pray. Are you praying for us?" 

"Yes; for all your people." 

Then they sat with him, questioning him about the 
Creator, the world, its age, how the world was peo- 
pled — and a number of questions that had not wor- 
ried his Cree friends at all. These warriors were 
more interested apparently in history than in doc- 
trine, and he felt that unlike most savage tribes they 
were to be won through their reason and not through 
their hearts alone. 

At last he felt he had got a foothold, and he turned 
to his task with fresh enthusiasm. He spent the 
afternoon answering their questions and explaining 
difficult points to them. As he defined the Trinity 
he drew a circle in the sand with a triangle set in 
it, making of this a symbol of Eternity, without 
beginning or end, and of the divine Person revealed 
to Hvmianity in three phases. 

Father Lacombe continued drawing pictures in the 



1871 FATHER LACOMBE 203 

sand — and the interest and understanding of his war- 
riors developed more rapidly than he ever hoped it 
would. 

"That night I went back to my tent," he says, 
"and a new plan was with me all the time. I dreamt 
of that. The next morning I took a parcliment of 
buffalo-skin and with a dead coal I made all those 
signs again on the skin, with many more. I nailed 
it on a pole in the middle of the camp and called the 
people about me. Every day after that wlaile I 
stayed among them I made my instructions there, 
and the Indians learned so fast I was happy. 

"At St. Albert, where I spent a part of that winter 
with the Bishop, I made with ink and paper a longer 
history ^ with these pictures. It started at the Cre- 
ation, and went down tlirough Bible history to the 
coming of Christ; then through the history of the 
Church and all Life on our pilgrimage to Heaven. 
The eclielle — the Ladder — the other priests called it 
for its shape, and they laughed at my plan. But they 
hked it too. 

"When I went to Montreal the next year the Sis- 
ters of the Congregation made a fine copy for me in 
colours, and I had many thousand copies of it printed 
in France." 

1 This Ladder (a Bible and Church history in pictures) of Father 
Lacombe was shown a few years later to Pope Pius IX, and its in- 
genious plan so appealed to him that he ordered several thousand copies 
made, that they might be available for Mission-work among the savage 
tribes in different parts of the world. 



204 FATHER LACOMBE 1871 

This summer, marked by the invention of his pic- 
ture-catechism, was destined to be the last of Father 
Lacombe's mission ambulante on the plains. 

Up to this time the Saskatchewan Valley had 
smiled to Heaven in the virginal freshness that moved 
Franchere to rhapsody a century and a half earlier. 

The seventies ushered in the beginning of the end 
of the wilderness. Outside forces were moving to its 
wakening. Well-based rumour had it that the rail- 
way to the Pacific would pass through the Saskatche- 
wan valley. Canada was in honour bound to keep 
its Confederation-promise and give British Columbia 
this railway connection with the east; and to all who 
knew the west it was apparent that the logical route 
lay through the fertile Saskatchewan belt and across 
the easy grades of the Pine River Pass. 

The Hudson's Bay Company — every man of the 
ancient corporation, from stately directors at Fen- 
church Street to the traders in the outposts — looked 
on with dismay. A railway to be built into the heart 
of their best fur-country! Appaling! . . . 
the fur-trade would vanish in its wake. The calam- 
ity must be averted — as the diplomatic and powerful 
company knew well how to avert any peril to its 
interests. 

Bishop Grandin hkewise heard the rumour with 
anxiety, but with no desire to postpone what he con- 
sidered both inevitable and just. His anxiety was 
due to the conviction that this railway would bring 
a great tide of immigration, the consequence of which 



1872 FATHER LACOMBE 205 

would be serious for the Indians if they were left 
unprepared to meet it. 

The Bishop had made a comprehensive study of his 
diocese. He was now thoroughly acquainted with 
the conditions and dispositions of his Indians. As 
a result he had determined to provide both Indians 
and JNIetis with schools : and these must be adequately 
equipped schools in which the white man's civilization 
might be inculcated in the children. 

In this way he became the originator of the existing 
system of Canadian Indian Schools. 

On April 2, 1872, the Bishop received Papal Bulls 
erecting a separate diocese of St. Albert, and de- 
fining the ecclesiastical province of St. Boniface which 
was to become a metropolitan see. Now that he had 
attained to the undivided responsibilities of a large 
diocese he felt impelled to take up with Father La- 
combe this pressing question of Indian schools. 

For some reason he chose to impart his plans to 
his associate by letter rather than in person. Per- 
haps he felt that he could do it more easily so, since 
it was a hard task he was about to impose and he re- 
gretted the necessity for it. He knew that Father 
Lacombe had his heart set upon Christianizing the 
Blackfeet, but that project must remain in abeyance 
for the greater need. 

Father Lacombe was the only man for the new 
work. Of the fifteen missionary priests then in St. 
Albert diocese he alone was of Canadian birth, and it 
was to Canada this new appeal had to be made. 



206 FATHER LACOMBE 1872 

France was doing, or had done, her part : the Church 
in Canada should now face her responsibilities. 

The Bishop's letter here translated from the orig- 
inal French, sums up the needs of the diocese and is 
in itself a notable document: 

"On the Banks of the Beaver Rivee, April 21, 1872. 
"My reverend and dear Father Lacombe, 

"I am spending Sunday here on the left bank of the beauti- 
ful Beaver. Last night after being in the water up to our 
knees for two hours fording the smaller stream, we arrived 
here too late to undertake another crossing. 

"... As a member of our Order you are my ad- 
viser and my first counsellor . 

"So I nominate you by these presents my Vicar-General. 
It is not an honorary title that I desire to give you. It is a 
charge I impose on you, the difBculties of which will soon 
confront you ; but with the grace of God you will surmount 
them. 

"At the present moment you know as well as I, what we 
can do with the resources which we have at our disposal. We 
can, it is true, live in a poor way, but we cannot inaugurate 
anything. You are begging me to establish the mission of 
Our Lady of Peace among the Blackfeet; also another 
among the Crees. And how many other places there are 
where our missionaries are on the rack and appealing for 
help.? 

"It is necessary then to procure resources in some way; 
our zeal will be paralyzed for lack of means to carry on the 
work. Notwithstanding the number of missions which we 
ought to establish, we are reduced to employing several 



1872 FATHER LACOMBE 207 

Fathers simply as school-teachers ; is it not a desperate state 
of affairs? 

"It is necessary, mon cher, for you to abandon your 
Indians for this year: I shall myself so far as I am able, go 
in your stead to dispense the bread of the Divine Word. 

"And you, where are you to go? Go I pray you, into your 
own country holding out your hands to your friends and 
mine. 

"It pains me to impose this onerous mission on you. It 
is, I know, an imposition on Canada, which has already shown 
so much interest in us ; but it seems to me that we cannot 
stand on our dignity — when it is as now a question of life or 
death — if we would avoid seeing the young Church of St. 
Albert diocese die at its birth. 

"When, in the last Council of Quebec, there was question 
of asking Rome to erect the ecclesiastical province of St. 
Boniface, I opposed it, fearing that once separated from the 
mother Province we should be somewhat abandoned by her. 
The Reverend Fathers of the Council reassured me on this 
point : I am convinced that they will all now regard your op- 
erations favourably. 

"I shall ask one other service of you. It concerns the ex- 
treme need for schools. It is the important work, the only 
real means of civilising our Indians. . . ." 

He here details a plan of raising money through a 
charitable association. 

"This project blessed by the Bishops and by our Holy 
Father, would also be blessed of God and would be one of the 
most powerful means while conserving the savage tribes, of 
civilising them — this taking hold of the rising generations in 
our schools. With the permission of the Ordinary try also 



208 FATHER LACOMBE 1872 

to find some good missionary priests and some young men 
to come to our aid by entering our Order. Finally, pray 
much for us ; if God be with us we must succeed. 

"I am not giving you a celebret. This letter will prove 
to those who have the patience to read it that you are not in- 
terdicted nor suspended, and that you have the confidence of 
your Superior and Bishop. 

"Go then, my very dear Father ; God is with you. Do not 
regard God's work in the diocese of St. Albert as my charge 
exclusively ; it is also yours. More, it is the work of the 
Lord, and we are his instruments. 

"Bon voyage! dear Father. I embrace you and bless you 
affectionately. "Your devoted brother, 

"Vital— J, 
"Bishop of St. Albert." 

This letter, written with difficulty in the Bishop's 
tent on the banks of the Beaver, was both a shock 
and stimulus to Father Lacombe, totally absorbed as 
he was in planning the spiritual conquest of the Black- 
feet. He took it as a disciplined soldier, however, 
for here verily were his marching orders. 

He was by no means enchanted with the prospect. 
To his spirited and at the same time sensitive temper- 
ament the role of a mendicant naturally did not ap- 
peal. His own knowledge of the needs of the diocese 
and his sense of obedience left him no choice however. 
Bishop Tache had collected $6,000 in Quebec in 1861, 
when his diocese was in such extreme need after the 
fire; why could he not do as well for St. Albert? he 
asked himself. . . . And if he succeeded, of what 
moment were his personal humiliations? 



18752 FATHER LACOMBE 209 

He went down to St. Paul de Cris early in May, 
closed that mission and set out for the east. 

He made the long journey across the prairies on 
horseback, arriving at St. Boniface for the conferring 
of the palliimi on Ai'chbishop Tache. St. Jean Bap- 
tiste's Day was included in the celebration, which took 
the form of a tourney of speech-making. Father La- 
combe delivered his oration in Cree. 

He found the past two years had brought many 
changes along the Red River. On the bank opposite 
the twin-towered cathedral of his friend, the frontier 
town of Winnipeg had grown up about old Fort 
Garry. 

Mariaggi, the epic-caterer of the frontier, had al- 
ready opened the first of his chain of western cafes. 
An empty hall in the sprawling town had actually 
been turned into a theatre — while newcomers were 
being pressed to buy town lots for $50 each! Win- 
nipeg, in very fact, was a lusty infant creeping to- 
ward its disastrous boom period. 

At St. Boniface he turned his back on the west 
and entered upon a new life of service in which he was 
to traverse continents as before he traversed the 
plains. 

It was a life in which he would learn that the cold 
splendour of European courts could shelter more 
heart-hunger than the smoky lodges of his Indians; 
and that the Gros-Bonnets, the Big Chiefs of the 
white men, were no more foi-midable on acquaintance 
than his old friends, jVatous and Sweet-Grass. 



PART II 

'Pursue the West hut long enough, His East! 



When Father Lacombe returned to Montreal, 
fresh from the life of the plains, he survej^ed the 
changing east with some awe and a great deal of 
appreciation. 

Behind him he had left the "taU young Adam of 
the west," struggling along its Red River fringe to 
a consciousness of its own possibiUties — but for the 
rest a wilderness overrmi by insouciant Indians, 
IMetis and fur-traders. 

Before him in the east he saw a new Canada rising 
out of the grave of Old World feudalism: a superb 
figure that, reaching out to closer union with the 
spectacular young giant of the west, would soon 
stand forth as a nation. 

The score of years that had elapsed since he went 
away had been fruitful of changes in the gray streets 
of JNIontreal, but in himself the alteration was even 
more striking. He had travelled a long way from 
the timid young Levite who wept as he said good- 
bye to the gentle Bourget in 1852. 

To easterners his strenuous personahty and his 
stories were alike unique and pleasing. Wherever 
he went he was welcomed royally. It was a strangely 
cold heart into which this "spoiled child of Provi- 
dence" could not creep. 

213 



214 FATHER LACOMBE 1872 

His first duty was to call upon Archbishop (later 
Cardinal) Taschereau of Quebec, to lay before him 
the needs of St. Albert diocese, and to urge the estab- 
lishment of an Association to assist its schools. This 
plan did not seem practicable to the Archbishop at 
the time, but he recommended Father Lacombe and 
his cause very warmly to all the clergy under his 
jurisdiction. 

"Ah, he was kind to me — that Cardinal — the first 
time I pass on Quebec to beg," Father Lacombe re- 
calls. "He had an appearance very severe, you know, 
and a face like ice. But behind that I found his 
heart was very warm." 

Father Lacombe hated the role of beggar. Each 
time he ascended a pulpit or made an address for this 
purpose the free spirit of the "little Indian" revolted. 
He had lived so long in a primitive land, where a man 
yielded almost without the asking what another's need 
claimed, that he found this work particularly humili- 
ating. 

In addition he dreaded those great audiences of 
critical palefaces, as he fancied them to be. His 
method of nerving himself then, and even years later, 
when this feeling arose in him was unusual but char- 
acteristic : 

"Why am I afraid?" he would demand of himself 
sternly. "I come here to speak the word of God, 
to carry on His work. . . . Ha, I am stu-pide, 
stu-pide, but . . . ! these people are more stu- 
pides even than I ! — Now I will talk." 



1873 FATHER LACOMBE 215 

In a letter to a friend, written from the Arch- 
bishop's Palace on Christmas Eve, 1872, Father 
Lacombe anticipates his first pubhc appearance in 
the ancient Capital: 

"You can imagine that at this moment I am not very much 
at ease, haunted as I am by the thought of my exhibition to- 
morrow morning under the vaulted roof of the old Cathedral. 
My body groans in anticipation ; what will I do when I stand 
before an audience to which I am so averse? 

"But what petty pride ! What miserable human respect ! 
Is it not sad to see so much self-love in an old Indian — such a 
blockhead as he is too !" 

When the Congregation nuns had reproduced his 
picture-catechism in colours he took it to the Des- 
barats house, whose head had 500 copies gratuitously 
printed for him. The Ladders, as he always called 
them, were then straightway shipped back to the mis- 
sions and were soon to be found in every corner of 
the West, where an Oblate had penetrated. 

He received considerable sums of money during 
his season of begging and remitted all happily to his 
Bishop; but no benefactor, as previsioned by the lat- 
ter, came up now on Father Lacombe's horizon to 
assist him in publishing his Indian dictionary.' 

1 This was the first book printed in Cree, but not the first in other 
Indian dialects of the West. The priests of the Hudson Bay dis- 
trict had books in syllabic Indian printed by Palsgrave several years 
earlier, while the Rev. Mr. Evans, the Wesleyan minister who invented 
this syllabic method, had some books printed even earlier. Bishop 
Tache, who originated the Chipewj'an characters, had a book of prayers 
and hymns in this tongue published by Palsgrave in 1857. 



216 FATHER LACOMBE 1873 

Finally an inspiration came to ask the Government's 
assistance. 

"Surely this much aid is due the missionaries who 
have been so strong a civilizing influence in the west," 
it was suggested. And the Government, fortunately 
falling in with the idea, made a grant of $1,000 to- 
ward the publication of the dictionary. 

It was found necessary to defer the publication 
of the book, as Archbishop Tache wrote now asking 
Father Lacombe to employ all his energies in securing 
new French settlers for the west. 

After a brief campaign of begging and coloniza- 
tion he expected his recall to the west. Instead, at 
the close of the winter he sailed from Portland for 
Europe, having been appointed the representative of 
his Archbishop at the General Chapter of their Or- 
der. His Grace was too ill at the time to leave St. 
Boniface. 

When he arrived in France Father Lacombe, hke 
all brother-missionaries who had preceded him, went 
from city to city addressing large congregations upon 
the needs of the western missions. Likewise he vis- 
ited nimierous seminaries, endeavouring to inspire 
some of the students to volunteer for the western 
field. 

A copy of his Ladder, which he presented to the 
Superior-General, so pleased that dignatary that he 
recommended the publication of 10,000 copies. But 
during his stay in Paris M. Letaille, a benevolent old 
man who was the head of the publishing-house of that 



1873 FATHER LACOMBE 217 

name, printed 16,000 copies for him at a nominal 
cost. 

Interesting glimpses of the impression made by 
Europe upon the free-lance of the plains-missions are 
to be had in his letters to Father Poulin, who was then 
living in retirement at a Montreal hospice, failing 
in health and threatened with bhndness. It was char- 
acteristic of the western priest's sympathetic nature 
that his longest letters were to this shut-in friend. 

From London, where he is learning metropolitan 
modes of transport, he writes on April 16th: 

"I have already commenced to plough London — under the 
earth and along the streets and over the streets and on the 
Thames. . . ." 

He speaks of visits to museums, to the Lords, the 
Commons and Westminster. . . . 

"What do you think of all that? I tell you, I do not 
know what to think of it. It is doubtless very fine for you, 
civilized men, who love these useless statues and walls gnawed 
into by Time, with all the shapeless stone towers which lift 
themselves into the air amidst numerous gables and turrets — 
and the more knobs and holes in them the finer they are con- 
sidered ! 

"Yes, it is very beautiful certainly. But all that seems 
nothing to me in exchange for our forests or our prairies or 
even our poor chapels. You may put me down as profane or 
savage, but would you have me think otherwise — moi, a poor 
missionary to those whom people in a sort of disdain call 
savages." 



218 FATHER LACOMBE 187S 

Cartier, the invalid Canadian statesman, Count 
Bassano and others entertained him here, but his visit 
to Archbishop Manning was to him the most im- 
pressive part of his stay in London. 

He writes of Manning with enthusiasm: 

"How this man pleased me! What a worthy Bishop! I 
made him a present of one of my 'Ladders,' and he seemed 
enchanted with this new plan of teaching the catechism." 

Could the sympathetic Archbishop be other than 
enchanted with the ingenious Ladder, which the mis- 
sionary showed him gravely as his one tangible 
achievement? He likely forgot to be amused at the 
picturesque jumble of men and porpoises in the wa- 
ters that conveyed the image of the Deluge, or with 
the lurid rain of fire that is seen to drown Sodom. 
He admired instead the wonderful ingenuity of his 
mind so appropriately fitting the lesson to the 
pupil. 

During their conversation Father Lacombe must 
have made some reference to the unseeing sight-seers 
in the once-Catholic temples of London — or in some 
other way introduced the subject of non-Catholics; 
for many years after as he spoke to me of this visit 
he recalled that the future Cardinal talked to him a 
long time about their separated brethren — urging him 
to love them as warmly even as he did his own people 
of the prairies, and to pray for them. 

" 'For I was one of them once,' the Archbishop 
said to me, 'and I know how they believe in their souls 



1873 FATHER LACOMBE 219 

1 they are right — so there is no blame for them that 
they do not see the Truth.' 

"Of course, I have pray for them before, but — " 
added Father Lacombe with dehghtful naivete, "that 
was the firs' time I truly understand the Protestant, 
and I begin to love them — not only a few hke Mr. 
Christie and ]\Ir. Hardisty, my good friends, but all 
of them: to pity them and pray for them, because I 
love them." 

As naive a comment as any he makes is contained 
in his first letter from Paris, though it must be re- 
membered that as yet the writer had met 'New World 
Enghsh only when travelling: 

"Before leaving England let me tell you, for your satis- 
faction and mine, that I have been enchanted with the good 
manners and politeness of the English of England. How 
very different they are from our wooden EngKsh of Canada 
and the United States. To your great surprise, doubtless, 
I shall tell you that not once from Portland to Dover has any- 
one given me the tiniest trouble nor shown me the least rude- 
ness. This is a big avowal, is it not.' — for me, who find it so 
difficult to be pleased with the manners of 'civilized' people." 

Paris he styles satirically "the Metropohs of 
fashions and good government." In the French 
houses of the Oblates, where so much had already 
been heard of the Indian ways and daring of their 
"fameux Pere Lacombe" he was an object of curi- 
ositj^ at first. His Superior-General spent a whole 
recreation near him one evening, he chronicles : 



220 FATHER LACOMBE 1873 

"... and at the end I believe he was convinced that 
this Pere Lacombe, whom they said they had awaited with so 
much impatience, was hke other mortals and fed on the flesh 
of animals — not human bodies." 

But the civility of his French cousins bores him — 

•"I have begun to get lonely, having no one to argue with 
me. It is shocking; they always agree with me . . ." 

He concludes this letter with "un salut a la mode 
Parisienne." At dinner with Louis Veuillot, the 
noted journalist, where he met several people of dis- 
tinction, the meal did not pass without an amusing 
contretemps. He writes to Father Pouhn : 

"At the close of the dinner they brought bowls filled with 
some liquid. I thought this was to drink and was on the 
point of swallowing it, when I had the sensible thought to ask 
my neighbour, the good Mdlle. Veuillot, what it signified. 
She laughed and said, 'It is to wash the fingers, mon Pere.' 

"Pugh! how they laughed, and I cried 'Vive nos sauvages!' 
— who do not need to wash themselves so often." 

The itinerant missionary spoke in churches and 
seminaries at Strasburg, Nancy, Vichy, Autun, Brest 
and Metz, so lately ceded to the Prussians. After the 
address in the Seminary here "the Superior came to 
me, and said if the Prussians had heard me they would 
have put me in a dungeon!" . . . A fresh adven- 
ture to which the voyageur-heart of the missionary 
would not have been averse! 

Father Lacombe did not, however, meet with the 



1873 FATHER LACOMBE 221 

success of either Bishop Faraud or Bishop Grandin. 
He could not speak of his mission-hfe from the view- 
point of a Frencliman. Consequently while the ad- 
dresses of this unusual missionary echoed like pages 
from a medieval romance, the young French semina- 
rian was not dra^vn to emulate him on the prairies. 

Fatlier Lacombe was somewhat discouraged. He 
writes that he is continually travelling to new points, 
working "like a negro, when he is not on the trains"; 
that he meets with little success, and if the tide does 
not soon turn he wiU become desperate. As a name- 
less unrecognized Indian brave might do, he exclaims : 

"... I will become a Prussian, or I -will declare my- 
self a Jesuit and declaim against Bismarck, so that I may be 
imprisoned, and then I shall make myself a name." 

By June 9th at Nancy he feels that he is civilised 
"almost to the degree of these proud Frenchmen"; 
but when he is asked to dine with the Bishop of Nancy 
he lapses — and describes the occasion in concise Metis 
terms of the camp and trail; "We made grande 
chaudiere!" (We had a well-filled kettle of food: a 
feast ) . 

All through Brittany, which had sent so many mis- 
sionaries to the west, he met with the most hearty 
welcome. He found that the Canadian Zouaves 
passing through Brittany on their way to Rome had 
made a lasting impression. He met many like the 
Bishop of Varennes, who said : 

"Send for your baggage: you must stay with us. 



ggg FATHER LACOMBE 1873 

For we Bretons love the Canadians. They are our 
brothers." 

To a government official who enquired concerning 
the Indian form of government Father Lacombe re- 
plied : 

"We have the true Republic. God is our Presi- 
dent, and we hold no debates. There is to be had 
only among us — Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. 
Vive le Republique — sauvage!" 

In Paris he witnessed the splendid reception ac- 
corded the Shah of Persia. But the heart of the 
plainsman is homesick; he is gorged with sight-see- 
ing, with the man-made splendours of cities, and he 
is tired of it all. He writes: 

" . . . It is true that not-withstanding all the beauti- 
ful things which I have seen in this France and England I 
have looked on sights as fine in the beautiful valley of the 
Saskatchewan or on the borders of some of our fine lakes. 

"Say what you will, you can not take this belief from me. 
I am writing you to-day from a nobleman's palace, but it is 
not as precious as my poetique tent in the wilderness, where 
I wrote on my knees my sermons in Cree and Blackfeet." 

This is the instinctive Indian in Father Lacombe 
speaking now, as it frequently did throughout his life. 
. . . Is it a reversion to type — some strong strain 
of one of his Indian ancestors? 

Still another side of his character is charmingly 
revealed in another communication to his friend. On 
the receipt of the good news that instead of being 



1873 FATHER LACOMBE 223 

doomed to total blindness Father Poulin may now 
hope to recover his eyesight, this letter wells up from 
the emotional heart of the Canadian abroad: 

"... What gave me most pleasure in your letter 
was to know that in the next there would likely be a few lines 
written by your own hand ! 

"Thanks, my God, a thousand thanks ; and you, my good 
Mother. . . . ^M}' friend is going to recover his sight! 
I could weep with the joy and consolation of it. . . . 0, 
niy Lord, Thou art satisfied with his sacrifice and especially 
with his heroic resignation. Thou hast said: 'It is enough. 
I know you now. . . . Finish what you have under- 
taken.' . . ." 

And at the end of the letter he prints in large romid 
letters : 

"NOW READ YOURSELF. I SALUTE YOU— I KISS 
YOLTl FINE BLACK EYES. IN THE SACRED 
HEART OF CHRIST, I AM, 

"YOUR DEVOTED FRIEND, 

"ALBERT LACOMBE, 
O. M. I." 

Vichy did not enchant him. 

"When people have bathed they soon end by having a fit 
of blue devils, if they are not of the number who go to the 
theatre and other pleasure-parties which they put in the way 
of strangers to kill time. . . . For, voyez-vous, the 
great school of Vichy does not suit me at all. 

''It has for a principle, and it teaches this in huge letters — 
one of which alone would fill one's vision — that when at Vichy 



224 FATHER LACOMBE 1873 

to take the waters, in order that they may exert all their in- 
fluence upon you, you must not occupy yourself with any- 
thing serious, not even with much praying to God. 

"We must simply float along the Boulevard, go on the 
minute to the spring assigned to you ; look up and down the 
fairy parterres and salute right and left the butterfly-ladies 
in their afternoon toilettes, which give them truly the ap- 
pearance of those insects * we caU in Quebec 'les Demoiselles,' 
and then — voila! — when you have looked up and down, con- 
fused and disheartened at all these imbecilities — then to tone 
up your system mentally and physically again, you go and 
throw yourself in the Bath . . . !" 

By August Father Lacombe was openly pining for 
the Northwest: 

"I am thinking very much of our missions, and my imagi- 
nation is continually with my dear friends, the Indians. This 
loneliness takes my appetite from me and sometimes makes me 
melancholy." 

He is expecting a visit from the Superior-General, 
and he decided to ask to be ordered back to Canada. 
. . . "I am horribly lonesome," he declares. 

In his next letter he relates an incident to amuse 
his shut-in friend. His brethren in Paris tease him 
about it, he says, but he. assures Father Pouhn gravely 
that this has been the one disagreeable incident of all 
his travels. 

The story is that on one of his numerous railway 

1 Quebec countryfolk call butterflies les demoiselles — the "young la- 
dies." 



1873 FATHER LACOMBE 225 

journej's he one day entered a compartment without 
noticing that it was reserved for women. 

"Soon," he ^vrites, "several women came in, but 
none took the liberty of pointing out my mistake. 
At the first station these women left, and I was alone. 
Then at the next depot a fat little man, accompanied 
bj' a ladj% opened tlie door into my compartment. 

"Perceiving me he made big eyes at me, and angrily 
told his wife not to enter until I passed out. Then I 
saw the mistake I had made and rose to leave the 
carriage. But my scomidrel called out aloud to the 
guard, before a large crowd: 

" 'Guard, come here, there is a Cure in the ladies' 
compartment !' 

"I now saw that this admirable philosopher was 
bent on making a little scandal. The guard arrived 
just as I ste^jped out on the platform, and he very 
politely asked me to enter another carriage. Already 
quite agitated I said to him: ,^_ 

" 'M'sieu le Garde, I am a stranger, and I did not 
know this compartment was reserved.' 

"But my insolent fellow, not yet willing to leave 
me alone, said roughly: 'You ought to have known 
it!' 

"You understand that I had contained myself now 
for a long time. I did so no longer. Now before 
the whole crowd I gave him something to think over: 

" 'Sir,' I said, 'I want to tell you that you are an 
insolent fellow. I can read in your face and speech 
that there are many things which you ought to know. 



gge FATHER LACOMBE 1873 

You ought to know what courtesy is ; but you do not. 
You are an unmannerly churl. Moreover in calling 
me a Cure, you are also mistaken: for I am only a 
poor missionary from America. 

" 'I have not the honour to be a Cure. However, 
if I knew your Bishop I would go and ask him to 
kindly name me your Cure for some weeks — and then, 
to make you know, if that were possible, I should 
scour you down, body and mind !' 

"Et puis, voila! the whistle announced the depar- 
ture . . . ": and Father Lacombe hastened to 
find another compartment. 

But his indignation was appeased by the outburst. 
The man who had defied Rowand, and worsted the 
sorcerer White-head was not likely to cower before 
a noisy little Frenchman of unclean mind. While 
the plain western speech dealt out to the fellow was 
probably beneficial. 



II 

On his return to Montreal that autumn Father 
Lacombe met Archbishop Tache there. The latter 
had been called east to confer with the Government 
concerning the amnesty for the agitators of 1869- 
1870. More particularly they dealt with the likeli- 
hood of Riel, the leader of the Metis government, 
contesting the vacant seat of Provencher for the Fed- 
eral house. 

Riel and many of his friends desired this; and he 
could easily be elected. But his presence in the 
House of Commons would embarrass the Govern- 
ment and endanger the peace of the Dominion — at 
least, of Ontario, which had become the storm-centre 
after the Metis had come to terms. 

Sir John Macdonald and Sir Hector Langevin 
met the Archbishop in the former's office. They were 
naturally anxious that the Archbishop should make 
Riel drop out of the electoral contest. They knew 
he could prevail on him, for hke all the Metis of Mani- 
toba Riel regarded Alexandre Tache as the warmest 
friend of his race among the whites. 

The Archbishop informed the two Ministers de- 
cisively that he would not help them, because he had 
already been too often deceived by them in regard to 
227 



228 FATHER LACOMBE 1873 

the amnesty. He would agree to do what they asked 
only on one condition — that they now definitely grant 
the amnesty instead of putting him off with fine prom- 
ises! 

Sir John, with one eye on Ontario's outburst of 
mingled loyalty and fanaticism — and with the other 
on the coming elections, hesitated. At last Tache 
told him he would do nothing in the matter — "until 
Sir John had given him a written guarantee of what 
he said." 

Was ever a more suggestive alternative presented 
to that charming old sinner of diplomacy, who could 
indicate a promise with one eye and wink it off with 
the other? This was a wall Sir John could not get 
around : and he did not want to leap over it. . . . 
So he retired — somewhere out in to the gray corridors 
or stately chambers of the Gothic building. 

As he went, we can imagine him smiling. For, 
however annoyed or nonplussed for the moment, he 
admired this Tache as one great and generous man 
can always appreciate the strength and ability of his 
peer. 

His colleague was left behind to make more prom- 
ises and win over the ruffled ecclesiastic. Langevin 
consequently was magnificent in his assertions, cap- 
ping them with the statement that if Sir John did 
not take the steps promised that day toward securing 
the amnesty he, Langevin, would "resign from the 
Cabinet and take Quebec with him." 

"I do not want your resignation: I want the am- 



187* FATHER LACOMBE 229 

nesty!" was the Archbishop's only response. And 
the interview ended, in an unsatisfactory manner. 

The Ai'chbishop and Father Lacombe now returned , 
disheartened to St. Boniface, and the Macdonald 
Government went forward to its overthrow. 

The new Government reluctantly inherited the 
white elephant of Kiel's political aspirations. They 
also approached the Archbishop: he repeated his 
claims to an amnesty for the Metis agitators as prom- 
ised him in 1870. They were not — for the same po- 
htical reason as the Conservatives — prepared to grant 
this. Sir Aime Dorion now appealed to Father La- 
combe. The latter, who was in Montreal at the time, 
dechned to interfere. He wrote the political friend 
who approached him: 

"I have been reflecting more and more upon what you said 
to me 3'esterday, on behalf of Mr. Dorion, asking me to in- 
tervene with Riel to secure his pledge not to present himself 
at the next general elections — because his doing so would do a 
great injury to the new government, making it lose twenty- 
five constituencies in Upper Canada; and that on the other 
hand his presenting himself as candidate and his re-election 
for the County of Provencher would compromise still further 
his cause and that of his compatriots. 

"A stranger to all political revolutions and occupying my- 
self only with my poor Indians of the Northwest I could 
scarcely anticipate that men would cast their eyes upon me 
for this mission. ... I have concluded that the wisest 
part for me . . . would be to abstain from interfering 
in any way in these elections. 

"The affair would seem to me to be more easily' arranged 



230 FATHER LACOMBE 1874. 

by some one of yourselves with the member for Provencher, 
and I could facilitate the interview if you desire it. In mak- 
ing this advance you have more chance of succeeding than 
I, although I fear that Riel will only answer you as he did 
me recently: 

" 'What candidate is there in the entire Confederation who, 
if elected by acclamation in his constituency would consent 
to sacrifice himself to forward the interests of his colleagues ? 
And furthermore, there is no such candidate representing a 
principle of nationality as I do.' . . ." 

Riel had fled to Montreal from St. Boniface in 
1873, when the warrant for his arrest was issued. 
When Father Lacombe met him there in 1874 he was 
in a state of mental derangement, due it was believed 
to the continual fear of assassination and arrest prey- 
ing on his mind since his first hurried exit from St. 
Boniface in 1872. It fell to the lot of Father La- 
combe as the Archbishop's representative in the east 
to visit the unfortunate Metis occasionally at Longue 
Pointe Asylum outside Montreal, where he was 
finally kept under supervision. 

From this house Father Lacombe transferred him 
this year to an institution at Plattsburg, N. Y., where 
he was kept under some restraint. His mind con- 
tinued to be affected at intervals — always upon re- 
ligious and political questions. One night in 
particular he astounded the community by running 
into the dining-room scantily clad and proclaiming 
himself to be the Holy Ghost. 

Notwithstanding his eagerness to go and civilise 



18Ti FATHER LACOMBE 2S1 

the Blackfeet Father Lacombe permitted himself to 
become absorbed in work for Archbishop Tache. 
This prelate was then bending his energies to pro- 
moting colonization of the west, and Father Lacombe 
seemed the one man equipped to be his lieutenant. 
His knowledge of the west and persuasive person- 
ality both fitted liim for his new duties. 

On July 22, 1874, Father Lacombe returned from 
a colonization campaign to Winnipeg as parish-priest 
of St. Marj^'s in the growing frontier-town. This 
was to be his headquarters while he continued his 
work of colonization. A large log-building served 
as a church and residence for himself and curate, 
Father Baudin. The church situated on the second 
floor was only reached by an outside stairway. 

The building had been erected for him, and for 
once Father Lacombe stepped into a mission-house 
which he did not have to construct or chink. This 
was an aid to bodily comforts; but in other ways the 
missionaiy did not enjoy his earlj^ ministry at Wirmi- 
peg. The people he met in his own parish or out 
of it seemed to him to be rarely as good or kind as 
his Christian Indians; while to sections of the popu- 
lation he found Ms priestly garb was offensive. 

Of these he used to ask indignantly: 

"^'VTiy shouldn't I wear my soutane if I want to? 
We have done much to civiHze tliis country wearing 
these soutanes: they are the Oblates' uniforms as 
soldiers of Clu'ist. The policemen, the trainmen and 
the Queen's soldiers wear their uniforms — and no one 



232 FATHER LACOMBE 1875-7 

objects. Why shouldn't I wear mine without re- 
mark?" 

More than once insulting, jeering remarks were 
thrown slyly at him as he passed through the streets; 
and usually then a very unpriestly desire came to 
thrash the man or boy who flung the jeer at the cruci- 
fix or robe. There never was anything of the turn- 
the-other-cheek Christianity about Father Lacombe. 

In the spring of 1875 he brought out a large number 
of excellent settlers. In 1876, in response to his 
eff'orts in Quebec and Massachusetts fully 600 
French-Canadians arrived in Manitoba. New par- 
ishes were formed at numerous points on the prairies, 
and Father Lacombe — rejoicing in the pleasure this 
gave his invalid Archbishop — apphed himself to col- 
onization with zest, as though he really enjoyed it. 
In reality he found it very ungrateful work. 

In 1877, accompanied by Father Fillion and two 
others, he continued his work. This year 400 families 
were settled in Manitoba. On one trip west Father 
Lacombe accompanied ten famihes from Lowell. 
The weather was depressing, and the band of emi- 
grants discouraged. On their arrival he left them in 
the immigrants' quarters promising to go with them 
next day to select their farms. 

The next day was radiantly fine. . . . "But 
such mud! The oily mud of Winnipeg in the days 
before there were pavements," Father Lacombe 
shuddered to recall it. 



1877 FATHER LACOMBE 233 

The newcomers sat outside the Hall smoking dole- 
fully. Inside the building their womenfolk were 
complaining steadily. They clamoured to go home. 

"How do things go this morning?" Father Lacombe 
asked them. 

"Oh, no better. It is a poor country you bring us 
to. It is always raining — raining; and then mud! 
Look at that mud! We will go back east." 

The words and manner alike were impertinent; 
and when they would not listen to his placating re- 
marks all Father Lacombe's patience fled, and he 
cried to them : 

"Then go back, since you have not more sense than 
to judge a country before you have looked into it. 
If there is deep mud here it is only because the soil 
is fat — the richest in America. But go back to your 
Massachusetts if you want to, where the soil is aU 
pebbles, and work again in the factories 1" 

His outburst acted upon their flagging ambitions 
like a cold douche. They decided to stay in Mani- 
toba, and in a few years they had no reason to regret 
their decision. 

"This year of 1877," Father Lacombe notes in his 
letters "was one of events on the Red River. . . ." 
And not the least was the arrival of the first locomo- 
tive-engine brought on a decorated barge down the 
river by the steamer Selkirk. During the last four 
miles of its journey the whistles of the Selkirk tooted 
joyously: the beUs of St. Boniface added their peals. 



234 FATHER LACOMBE 1877 

waking the echoes of vanished days along the historic 
river. And Winnipeg turned out en masse to wel- 
come the harbinger of the new Era. 

Apart from the ordinary round of his ministry and 
his eastern work this period of Father Lacombe's life 
was marked with the formation of several notable 
friendships. Friends have always been to his warm 
nature the jewels strung along the rosary of his years, 
and these of the seventies made no exception. 

In St. Paul he met Jim HiU, then a man in the 
prime of life and already marked out as one of the 
coming men of the west. Two qualities drew Father 
Lacombe's regard to him — the excellence of the man 
in his domestic relations, and his cormnanding genius 
for business — coldly daring, keen and unfailingly ac- 
curate in his judgments. 

One day driving down the winter trail to St. Paul 
Father Lacombe met Donaid Smith. He also was 
in his prime, a man of greater abilities and more stu- 
pendous plans than the Red River yet realized. The 
priest, who had always a keen scent for the note of 
distinction in a man's character, soon felt himself 
drawn to a friendship for Smith which was to be per- 
manent. 

Mr. Smith was delicately thoughtful for the mis- 
sionary during their long cold drive. As habitual he 
was strikingly pleasant in voice and manner: where- 
fore Father Lacombe adds: 

"But ah, he was determined behind that pleasant- 
ness. For the Company he was the ideal man; 



1877 FATHER LACOMBE 235 

smooth but so firm! He fulfilled always their motto 
— 'Pro pelle cutem.' Also he was the most lucky man 
I ever knew — and one of the most agreeable to ap- 
proach." 

Another interesting man of the early days of 
Canadian rule in the west was Luxton, the brilliant 
founder of the Manitoba Free Press. His first meet- 
ing with Father Lacombe was made picturesque by 
the circumstances and the strong individuahty of the 
two. 

This is the story of their meeting, evoked by a 
question concerning an old letter. 

"When I was at St. Mary's of Winnipeg, you un- 
derstand that was hard work for me, making the 
foundation of a new parish with a melange of all kinds 
of people — Ontariens, Metis, Scotch, Irish, French 
and some Indians. 

"Well, when I was there in Winnipeg a newspaper 
was organized — what you call the Free Press, and 
Luxton, that was the man at the head. He did not 
care much about us, you understand. He did not 
know anything of us priests nor our faith, and he was 
prejudiced. From many httle things I see that. So 
I decide to go and talk with him. . . ." 

Father Lacombe's old eyes twinkled at the memory 
of that interview and of Luxton's laughter at the 
audacious Blackrobe. 

Like everyone else to whom this naive, warm- 
hearted priest cared to show his real self the keen- 
witted newspaperman was captivated with his amusing 



236 FATHER LACOMBE 1877 

jumble of fun and diplomatic wile. Luxton eventu- 
ally came to regard Father Lacombe and his enter- 
taining friendship as one of the mental oases of his new 
life! The regard was mutual. 

"I admired that man," Father Lacombe recalls; 
"he was so honest and sincere and upright." 

Later on Luxton felt it in his conscience to attack 
the Canadian Pacific for what he beheved to be 
monopolistic methods ; likewise he defended the Cath- 
olics' claims to maintain their own schools upon their 
own taxes, if they so desired. Both courses were un- 
popular with the powers and the first ruined him. 
So when Luxton's uncompromising independence 
and sincerity had brought him to hard days, and when 
many former friends had deserted him it was to Father 
Lacombe he came one day; and that warm heart, 
touched to the quick, saw him over the darkest days 
until new hope came. . . . 

Here is the letter that had lain forgotten while 
Father Lacombe talked — one written years after 
Luxton left Winnipeg. 

"St. Paul, Minn., Sept. 23, '99. 
"Rev. Father Lacombe, Edmonton, N. W. T. 

"My Rev. and deab. Father: I have seen in the Win- 
nipeg papers that just about now the fifty-year jubilee of 
your entering upon your holy work is being celebrated. 
Though I am not sure that it is not somewhat of an im- 
pertinence on the part of one who is not of the same fold 
to do so — I cannot forbear tendering my congratulations 
on the occasion. Your humanising work — not to mention 



1877 FATHER LACOMBE 237 

the strictly Christian part — has been such that it cannot 
fail to command the admiration of all good men who know 
anything of what it has been. 

"My dear and venerable Father, permit me to assure you 
of my most fervent hope, that you may yet be spared 
many more years of valuable life to be more or less an 
active participant in good work, and to enjoy seeing the 
fruits before you are called hence to whatever reward is in 
store for the most holy of men — for that I know is yours. 
"Respectfully and affectionately, 

"Yours truly, 

"W. F. LUXTON." 

The restraint over the warmth of this letter tells 
its own story of Luxton's attitude toward priests, be- 
fore he came to know this one. When he wrote the 
letter he was manager of a paper in St. Paul; since 
then he has passed away, while his octogenarian friend 
remains. 

During Father Lacombe's incumbency of St. 
Mary's Church a young Metis named Angus Morri- 
son was committed to gaol on a charge of murder. 

As chaplain of the Penitentiary Father Lacombe 
one day met his half-breed there — all half-breeds 
were his, it will be noted. Angus was a good-looking 
youth of twenty who always protested his innocence 
of murdering a Scotch settler for robbery. Many 
believed him innocent, and general sympathy was felt 
for him. 

During his imprisonment Father Lacombe was his 
spiritual adviser. When he was finally sentenced to 



238 FATHER LACOMBE 1877 

be hanged Father Lacombe circulated a petition pray- 
ing the authorities to commute the sentence. Eventu- 
ally an imposing list of names went down to Ottawa, 
but it was decided that the sentence should be carried 
out. 

To Father Lacombe's distress, when he conveyed 
this news to the prisoner, the lad fainted. Again 
when Angus took leave of his widowed mother the 
scene was so pitiful that Father Lacombe felt he had 
known nothing of human grief before. 

This is his story of Angus in part: 

"Hah! I prepared him then to be strong and cour- 
ageous, but I told the Bishop I would not consent to 
go to the hanging. . . . Ah, I could not do that. 
I made a plan — ^in a Metis parish nearby they had 
wanted me for many weeks to preach a retreat. 
This was my chance. . . . 'Now,' I said to the 
Bishop, T am going.' 

" 'But that wiU take you away some days,' he said: 
'You forget your Angus.' 

"I beg him then to let me go away: some stronger 
priest would go with Angus. 

" 'No,' the Bishop insist with me, 'you prepared 
him; he loves you now like a father. If you go away 
he will be discouraged. This is your work for him. 
. . . It is your duty as a priest.' 

"Then I go home and say to myself: 'No, I cannot; 
it wiU kill me.' . . . Some days I was thinking 
that, but at last one day at Mass I feel to myself I 
can go now, since it is my duty. . . . But again 



1877 FATHER LACOMBE 239 

Aviien I think of it — it was like killing myself. Al- 
ways I felt that on my mind. 

"That night before the execution I stayed aU night 
in his cell with Angus. He was a frightened lad, my 
Angus — verj'^ nervous and affectionate. I told the 
gaoler he must not put the irons on that night: I 
would be responsible. He did as I said. 

"After we said the prayers Angus slept aU night, 
but I could not close my eyes. I just watch that poor 
lad and pray for liim. ... At four o'clock I 
roused him. 

"When he wake to that day and know it — he cried; 
my poor Angus! And I let him cry well at first. 
Then I help him dress. Outside in the hall before 
his cell I offered the Sacrifice of the Mass, and gave 
him communion. . . . He would not take any 
breakfast. 

"That was a fine day — cold but fine, and the scaf- 
fold was built outside the window on the second story. 
When we came to that window I felt I was going to 
faint myself, because going tlirough the corridor I 
saw the hangman coming all in black. 

"Outside, it seemed aU the people of Winnipeg 
were there: that was one of the first hangings in the 
town. 

"I was afraid for Angus, and I say: 

" 'My boy, show yourself a brave man to those 
white peoples — ' 

"They told the prisoner to speak, but he could not. 
I spoke for him, just to say that Angus was dying 



240 FATHER LACOMBE 1877 

all right with his God, and he asked pardon from any 
one he had ever hurt. 

"Now — ah, God came upon me, and my weakness 
changed. No more nervous — I was aU master of my- 
self! . . . 

"Over us there was a big black flag, and down be- 
low I knew there was a coffin . . . and across 
the river the bells of St. Boniface were tolling. 

"It was nine o'clock — the hour. 

"Angus knelt, and I pronounced over him a last 
absolution, . . . Ah-h! . . ." 

The old priest's head fell forward in silence, and as 
I waited I heard echoes of Eternity. . . . 

"The body of my Angus was brought to St. Boni- 
face that day — and the Bishop Tache made one of his 
finest sermons over that poor boy. That text he took 
from the Dies Iraej you know that grand sentiment 
in it.' . . . 'Tantus labor non sit cassus?' — 'Shall 
such love meet no return?' 

1 The reference here is to one verse of the Dies Irae, the superb 
requiem hymn of the Catholic Church composed many centuries ago. 
Its rhythm has the swing of a tolling bell; chanted, it is one of the 
most affecting and beautiful things in the world of music. The verse 
from which the text was taken is in full: — 

Quarens me sedisti lassus, 
Redemisti crucem passus: 
Tantus labor non sit cassus? 

Seeking me Thou sat'st forlorn, 
J Saved me on the tree of scorn: 

Shall such love meet no return? 



Ill 

Even in the pampered ways of ci^^lization Father 
Lacombe lost none of the vitality wliich had so dis- 
tinguislaed him on the plains. One day in the 
spring the small riverboat Srvallow, on which he was 
returning from Selkirk mission, suddenly careened 
off Point Douglas in a bitter wind and snowstorm. 
All hastened to the small boats. Father Lacombe 
missed his footing and fell into the river. 

As he was about to sink a second time a man 
caught him by the hair and pulled laim into the boat. 
Numbed and icy after a long walk on reaching land 
he found shelter in a Metis cottage, while a messen- 
ger went to St. Boniface for the Archbishop's car- 
riage. 

"I went to bed about five o'clock that daj!- maybe; 
next day I rise about seven, all right. That was 
nothing — a dip in the river!" 

But while Father Lacombe was spending liimself 
in moulding into shape the elements of his town-par- 
ish and in colonisation work — events were moving 
marvellously on the plains among lais own people. 

The Government of Ottawa, recognizing that a 

new period of western development was at hand, 

mobolized and despatched to the Northwest — in 

1874 — a semi-military force of INIounted Pohce. 

241 



242 FATHER LACOMBE 1877 

The intention was to pave the way for new forms of 
government, meanwhile suppressing cattle-stealing 
and the illicit sale of liquor on the Montana border. 

Having profited by the lesson of the Red River 
agitation the Government also sent commissioners 
into the country to deal with the Indian tribes before 
the change came about. By these treaties the In- 
dians agreed to live within fixed limits of territory 
called reserves, and in lieu of certain annual pay- 
ments and rations they yielded all claim to the wide 
hunting-grounds of their fathers. 

It was at Treaty No. 6, near Fort Pitt, that Father 
Lacombe's Cree friends made their surrender. 
Sweet-Grass was still Head-Chief, and that day he 
spoke worthily for his people, urging them to come 
peacefully into treaty-relations and learn to farm like 
white men. The Treaty stipulated not only money 
payments but the provision of schools on reserves and 
practical instruction in farming. 

In 1877 Governor Laird brought the Blackfeet 
into treaty. Father Lacombe was invited by the 
Federal Government to be present as counsellor and 
friend of these Indians, in the same capacity Bishop 
Grandin had attended the Cree treaty-ceremonies. 
He left Ottawa in August intending to travel by St. 
Paul and Fort Benton to Macleod, the new Police 
post in the Blackfoot country. 

Unfortunately he fell ill at St. Paul and after a 
severe sickness of weeks was obliged to return to St. 
Boniface. The treaty-commissioner meanwhile se- 



.877 FATHER LACOMBE 243 

ured as his substitute his former assistant, Father 
5Collen. 

The preliminaries of the Indian problem being dis- 
)osed of and the Indians estabhshed on their reserves 
he Government was reprehensibly slow in carr}'ing 
»ut its whole programme. They were to teach the 
ilders to farm and the children to read: they lagged 
n doing both. 

The buffalo, steadily decreasing in numbers for 
ome years, suddenly disappeared. 

Nothing could have more effectively broken the 
inks of the Past for tlie Indian. The buffalo had 
)een their living manna. Emerging each spring 
rom the earth, as they once believed, the Indians 
ooked on the buffalo as a manifestation of the Great 
spirit's care for his people. 

With the coming of the whites this was gone! 

They did not stop to reason why; or to what ex- 
ent their reckless slaughter was accountable. They 
jreferred to blame the extermination of the buffalo 
ipon the Sioux and American trader with his repeat- 
ng-rifles. 

It was in the Avinter of 1878-1879 the Indians' best 
riend disappeared entirely, and the Hunger-Moon 
)f the Blackfeet did not last for twenty-eight daj^s 
hat year, but for months. 

The Crees, more fortunate in their northern hunt- 
ng-grounds, had resource in other game and in goods 
exchanged for furs at the Company's posts. But the 
Blackfeet did not live in a fur-country. As in John 



24.4. FATHER LACOMBE 1877 

Rowand's day the buffalo had been their all. They 
were now in a most desperate plight. 

Twenty years before Father Lacombe had begun 
to Christianize the Blackfeet, and it was ten years 
since he had planned to give himself entirely to civ- 
ilising them. In all this time he had lost none of his 
original interest in these Indians, and it was with 
poignant grief that he heard of their present condi- 
tion through letters from Father Scollen. 

He had known them in their pride — ^kings of the 
open plain in their barbaric power — brave and proud, 
honourable and hospitable; dwellers in frail skin- 
lodges yet Lords of all the outdoor world. Now he 
heard of them as miserable dependents upon the char- 
ity of the Mounted Police and the missionaries. Ow- 
ing to the difficulties of transportation supplies could 
not be brought in readily. Moreover in spite of the 
best efforts of those in the country it was difficult to 
bring Ottawa to rmderstand the acute distress that 
prevailed. 

Father Scollen in his voluminous letters related 
that the Indians were devouring their dogs and had 
even eaten the carcasses of poisoned wolves and soup 
made of old buffalo bones gathered on the prairies. 
A few of the aged died of starvation and he had seen 
men leaving their lodges because they could not pro- 
vide food for children wailing with hunger. 

They had begged all they could from the few 
whites in the settlements. Now he feared they 
would be driven to steal the range-cattle. 



1879 FATHER LACOMBE 245 

In a letter by the same writer forwarded to Ot- 
tawa by Major Irvine, N. W. M. P., the harrowing 
condition of the Indians is strongly set forth. He 
demands farming implements and seed for the Pie- 
gans, as promised at their Treatj" two years earlier. 
He concludes with the hope that if not palatable his 
letter may at least be useful — "for I can assure you I 
have written it with all franlmess." Which state- 
ment no one who has read the letter will doubt! 

Jean L'Heureux, an interesting character who had 
applied, but was rejected by Father Lacombe, as a 
catechist at Lac Ste. Anne in the fifties, wrote an 
appeal from the camp of Chief Natous. He im- 
plored the Princess Louise at Ottawa, as the daugh- 
ter of the Great INIother, to take pity on the starving 
women and children. 

Bishop Grandin in one letter to Father Lacombe 
— to whom he is always prompted to turn when in 
distress — svmis up the tale of misery among the 
northern tribes : 

"... To-day again we have learned very sad news 
of these poor inhabitants of the plains. The Metis would 
have been able to keep off starvation with the provisions 
they laid by last autumn, but the starving Crees threw them- 
selves on their mercy. The latter were reduced to eating 
their dogs and horses : dying with hunger, to eat the car- 
casses of poisoned wolves and dogs. 

"... At St. Albert, too, we have had reason to 
feel want to some degree. A band of Assinaboines passed a 
part of the winter camped around us. Their hunt had not 



246 FATHER LACOMBE 1879 

been successful and we did what we could to give them aid. 
Without the Company, without our missions and others, 
many would have died of hunger. . . . Our dear Father 
Ledue, who hoped he had provisions ahead for two years, 
fears we will be short of food before the spring is over." 

There could not have been more painful news for 
Father Lacombe than this, repeated in letter after 
letter from his confreres. It was the more distress- 
ing that he had no means with which to send rehef ; 
and he could almost reproach himself that he was 
living in some degree of comfort while they suffered. 

Acting on the information contained in his letters 
he demanded from Ottawa that they hasten rehef 
to the west. In the case of hvmian suffering his tem- 
perament never would brook the delays of red tape. 

As a consequence of the many representations 
from the northwest relief was hurried to the Indians 
in the spring of 1879. 

On June 2 Father Lacombe sailed for Europe. 
He had been delegated to represent Archbishop 
Tache at the General Chapter of their Order assem- 
bling in France. Visiting Rome, he presented the 
Pope with a copy of his Cree-French dictionary. 

The happiness he experienced in meeting for the 
first time the Commander-in-Chief of their scattered 
missionary forces reveals itself joyously in letters to 
the Archbishop. The latter affectionately assures 
him that he is glad his own iUness has given this op- 
portunity to his friend. 



1880 FATHER LACOMBE 247 

The glories of Rome's art and architecture found 
a more appreciative spectator in him than the splen- 
dours he looked on during his first visit to Europe. 
He confesses he is again civilise. 

But one day in a Roman crowd he finds that a 
purse with one hundred and thirty francs has been 
abstracted from the wide pocket of his soutane, and 
he satirically notes that he is not in the west — where 
men are not sufficiently civilised to steal! 

Still another day the Saskatchewan is vividly re- 
called to him: up on the great cupola of St. Peter's, 
enjoying a superb view of the city built on the Seven 
Hills, he meets two priests from Louisiana and from 
them hears of Father Frain. This was the delicate 
young ecclesiastic whom twenty years before he 
brought on a dog-sleigh to Fort Edmonton to con- 
sult Dr. Hector. 

Now the same Pere Frain is somewhat of a per- 
sonage in his southern home — 

"Monsignor Frain!" — the old Indian missionary 
notes expressively in his diary. His friends are all 
becoming Bishops or INIonsignori ; he remains onlj' the 
old Father Lacombe. But what of that, since he is 
also to his Indians Arsous-kitsi-rarpi — ^the Man-of- 
the-Good-Heart ? 

In Paris on his return he again visits the old pub- 
lishing-house of Letaille and arranges for the publi- 
cation of a new illustrated catechism for the Crees. 
It is a fine edition, of wliich Father Lestanc receiving 



848 FATHER LACOMBE 1880 

a first copy in his remote mission exclaims — "Truly 
you are of the Age of Progress!" 

Father Lacombe, while in Montreal on his return 
early in 1880, arranged a loan of $20,000 for the Col- 
lege being built by the Archbishop of St. Boniface. 
In the same year constructon began upon a stone 
church for his parish of St. Mary's and upon a girls' 
academy adequate for the needs of the growing pop- 
ultion. 

From these facts it is obvious that Winnipeg was 
rapidly growing too commonplace and civilized for 
Father Lacombe to be quite happy in it. Writing 
to a friend on January 8th, he says: 

"Here, my dear Father, I continue to do penance by re- 
maining in the midst of modern civilization. More than 
ever I long for the Indian missions. . . ." 

But even as the monotony of his parish-work trou- 
bled his peace of mind a new field was opening for 
him. 

Destiny was afoot on the plains, knocking at the 
great gates of the west. The steel head of the new 
trans-continental was pushing its way out to the 
prairies, bringing in its wake all the seeds of develop- 
ment the west was to know in the next two decades. 

Fully one-third of the workingmen engaged on 
the construction-work were recruited from the Mani- 
toba settlements of French-Canadians. There were 
other Catholics among the workmen and staff, and 
the Archbishop occasionally sent a priest out to visit 



1880 FATHER LACOMBE 249 

them. TJiis man had reported the navvies in a sad 
condition through the bad influence of whiskey-ped- 
dlers, "bad-men" and other demoralizing agencies 
that follow close upon railway construction. 

At the request of several of the contractors the 
Archbishop arranged they should have a permanent 
chaplain. His judgment promptly selected Father 
Lacombe as the one man for the sendee. A man who 
had always made his way with the plains-nomads 
was not likely to be discouraged or repelled by the 
unlovely conditions of railway-camps. 

On November 2, 1880, with Sir Charles Tupper 
as a fellow-traveller, Father Lacombe went out from 
Winnipeg to his new mission. He travelled by wag- 
on-road and construction-train to Rat Portage — then 
the terminus of the road. Here, cordially welcomed 
by the contractors, he established himself in an un- 
finished building, with an old box-car for a tempo- 
rary chapel. 

His first impression of navvies pertained to the 
extent of their blasphemy — vile utterances thrown 
about as lightly as a man calls for pick or axe. To 
him, at once reverent and aggressive, this was a toc- 
sin. His rebukes and appeals were as impassioned 
as their utterances were hardened and criminal. He 
made indeed of his own faith and love and reverence 
whips to drive the fear of the Lord into their neg- 
lected souls. 

It was after one such castigation that he made this 
entry in his diary: 



g50 FATHER LACOMBE 1880 

"It seems to me what I have said is of a nature to bring 
reflection to these terrible blasphemers, who have a vile lan- 
guage all their own — with a dictionary and grammar which 
belongs to no one but themselves. This habit of theirs — is 
diabolical !" 

He had entered upon a wandering pastorate in 
Tvhich he would find the moral condition of the 
whites inferior to that of the pagan Crees. In later 
years, with the memory of this period softened by 
Time, he was unwilling to say that these construc- 
tion-gangs were exceedingly disorderly. He would 
recall little of them except their unvarying kindness 
and respect for himself. But a truer picture of con- 
ditions is had from his diary, which is made up of 
brief, vigorous notes. 

He actually found the camps reeking with blas- 
phemy; hideous on occasions with the drinking of 
smuggled liquor and with immorality. This was true, 
although accidents were numerous, and the reckless 
navvies going out could never teU who would next be 
brought in dying. 



IV 

Fathee Lacombe could not remain indifferent in 
the face of such disorder. He promptly threw him- 
self into the fight; his strong heart with its powers 
of sympathy and scorn; his faith and authority — 
against the dare-devil lusts of the navvies. He 
fought with such good effect that in time most of the 
contractors, and the President of the Canadian Pa- 
cific, personally expressed their appreciation of his 
remarkable senaces. 

But the contest was not waged with a light heart. 
. . . "Que c'est triste de voir I'etat des choses 
id!" he concludes one pathetic entry in his diary. 

A fortnight after liis arrival a big dance was given 
in the village — "a disorderly and scandalous ball," 
he terms it. Through the greater part of the night 
he lay awake compelled to Hsten to the shouts and ri- 
baldry of drunken men and women. 

He finally went himself to the house where these 
dances were given each week, and where all the week 
moral disorder prevailed. He implored the woman 
who owned the estabhshment to change her life — ^to 
cease her work of debasing men through liquor and 
\ace, fattening her purse upon their degradation. 

Woman can fall so low that this harridon answered 
the earnest priest with insults and jeers. He turned 
261 



252 FATHER LACOMBE 1880 

from the door in disgust and heartbreak — for the 
first time in his missionary career thoroughly baffled. 

The powers of evil impressed him as overwhelm- 
ing. Father Lacombe could now understand why 
the contractors had so urged the Archbishop to send 
them a priest to clean up the Augean stables of vice 
in which their men wallowed. 

The sense of near-Despair that possessed him after 
this first conflict with the navvies' evil-genius endured 
for a time. But other days were coming in which 
the Vampire of the frontier was to see her grip on 
men's souls somewhat weaken as the indefatigable 
little missionary drew them to himself, and whipped 
their rude souls into a fresh realization of life as 
Life. ■ 

Father- Lacombe had recourse to prayer. "My 
God, have pity on this httle village where so many 
crimes are committed every day!" was the entry he 
made one night in his diary after the day's work was 
done. Again some days later he recorded: 

"I am convinced more and more that the sins committed 
in this little corner of the world are enormous. Since I can- 
not stop all the evil, at least I have the power to pray for 
these sinners and arrest the divine anger." 

This statement was made in no arrogance of soul, 
but in the absolute behef that God would not refuse 
a prayer for grace. 

From camp to camp he went blessing, rebuking, 
exhorting, cajoling. Gradually his first shock at 



1880 FATHER LACOMBE 253 

conditions modified, as he saw more clearly into the 
hearts of the men who toiled in this 

" Land of the wilful Gospel, 

Thou worst and thou best; 
Tall Adam of lands, new-made 

Of the dust of the West." 

The Archbishop had appointed him a chaplain: his 
own good nature made him a Bureau of accommoda- 
tion: as his slim diary gives evidence. It is dotted 
with commissions entrusted by the labourers — all 
duly crossed out in token of fulfilment. 

One wants a dictionary; another a prayer-book; 
others send subscriptions to newspapers. One 
Hudon wants the Father to look up a house in Win- 
nipeg for his family; another, Berube, asks him to 
deposit $250 in the bank. Amounts from $40 to 
$100 are sent by Father Lacombe home to the fam- 
ilies in Manitoba and Quebec. And all these com- 
missions were scrupulously fulfilled. 

"Received from of .... in Quebec, $...., to 

deposit in the Bank of " 

SO the entries frequently run. Or again — 

"A sends $. . . . to his father, , of 

St. , in the diocese of ; write to liis mother." 

Another entrj' marks his promise to look into the 
cahane of John Ward left untenanted at Whitefish, 
and to report conditions to the said John. Still fur- 



264 FATHER LACOMBE 1880 

ther memoranda remind him to procure entertaining 
reading-matter for such a camp an J medicines for 
such another. Nothing is too small to note or do, if 
it contributes to the welfare of his men — his big heart 
having speedily adopted them as his own. 

He brought their letters in to them when possible, 
and carried their answers away to post. He read 
and wrote for those who could do neither — and in this 
way frequently obtained a strong hold over the 
younger men inchned to yield to the worst influences 
of life. 

Once after reading a letter for a lad from his 
sweetheart, the young man dictated a pleasant re- 
sponse not without such vows of constancy and affec- 
tion as the heart of the maiden in Quebec was 
doubtless hungering to receive. This done, Father 
Lacombe cast a knowing eye on the young man and 
informed him that he was now going to add a few 
facts about the lad's real life. 

He only agreed to the young fellow's prayer to 
refrain — on condition that his gay young compatriot 
make it possible for him to send a good report next 
time. The bargain was made and the lad hved up 
to it. 

"More than once," said Father Lacombe years 
later with a tender smile for the gar9ons and their 
perplexities. "I would say to those gar9ons — Tf 
your conduct here is not that of good Christians, 
5'^ou will see. I will write and tell Her. . . , 
And then it's all finish with you!' 



1881 FATHER LACOMBE 255 

"Ha-a-ahl how they beg me not to do that — what 
fine promise they make always if I do not! I was 
teasing them, of course, but the}^ do not know that 
for sure. They did not know how much I mean. 
So thej^ try to be better — and that was all what I 
want!" 

The routine of his ministry was similar in each 
camp. At dusk when the men came in from work 
to the lights and rude cheer of the log eating-house 
thej^ would find this sturdy little man in the black 
cassock waiting for them. He was welcomed and 
treated reverentl}^ by all the men. To the French- 
Canadians his coming was that of a beloved and be- 
nevolent relative. 

A hearty supper soon disappeared before the at- 
tack of the men upon the rough fare in tin bowls and 
plates on rough-board tables. Then over their pipes 
as they lounged against their bunks there was the 
blessed interchange of news and comment which 
makes the visit of an outsider to a woodland camp 
memorable. 

After the pijie those who would attend the even- 
ing-service remained in the cook-house, while hymns 
were sung and Father Lacombe in his picturesque 
manner talked to them in both languages. Then 
confessions were heard — a blanket across a comer 
forming a confessional-screen — and it was rarely be- 
fore midnight that the tired missionary could roll 
himself up in his blanket and find rest in one of the 
bunks. 



856 FATHER LACOMBE 1882 

Before the foreman's stentorian reveille had tor- 
tured the ears of the slumbering navvies the priest 
was afoot again preparing an improvised altar for 
the divine Sacrifice, and at five the men trooped in 
clumsily but devoutly to the service and commimion. 
By seven the Mass was over, the men had break- 
fasted and were ready for duty. 

As they swung off to their work Father Lacombe 
was wont to stand in the doorway and bid God-speed 
to these companies of Labour's world-army, as they 
moved off into the morning mists. 

Sometimes the railway-chaplain travelled between 
camps in a hand-car, a chilly means of transport in 
winter. On February 10, 1881, he went on such a 
trip, and his note-book tells its own story: 

"11 — Sick; like pleurisy. I am paid for under- 
taking this trip." 

"12 — I continue to suffer." m 

The three following days are summed up in the 
entry — "I suffer all day." 

"16 — My God, I offer you my sufferings." 

He is roused from thought of self, however, on the 
following day by a horrible accident in which three 
men were killed and four injured by an explosion. 
He went out to these at night as soon as the word 
came. 

That year his Lenten visits to the railway-camps 
covered all the territory between Port Arthur and 
Winnipeg. In May he began the erection of a 
church at Rat Portage. Then he travelled hun- 



1882 FATHER LACOMBE 257 

dreds of miles by canoe with an Indian guide visiting 
the Indian camjis in the back-country. 

This summer — 1881 — the JNIarquis of Lome was 
■welcomed to the Portage with all the pomp the wood- 
land depot could muster. 

The Governor-General, travelling by canoe from 
Thunder Baj^ was met do^vn stream by a flotilla of 
Saulteau canoes which as they advanced moved in 
and out in a bewildering series of mancEuvres. 
Swaying to the paddles the canoemen sang the old 
melodies of the voyageur days. 

The maze of canoes steadily approached the envoy 
of the Great White Mother: in the van rode Father 
Lacombe glad to participate again in an Indian cer- 
emonial. 

From the prow of his canoe fluttered a Red Cross 
flag — ^the banner he had waved in triumph to the 
Sarcee camp when he restored the captive INIargue- 
rite; the Red Cross he had held up as a sign of truce 
to the warring Crees on the morning of the memor- 
able battle. 

Here where Progress was taking its first sinuous 
hold upon the land of the vanished voyageurs — re- 
mote from his beloved plains and painted nomads — 
the Red Cross had reappeared. It dipped in salute 
to His Excellency, who stopped to talk a while with 
the bronzed eagle-eyed missionary in the shabby 
black cassock. He was unaware that he held con- 
verse with one whose name would yet fill a larger 
place than his own in Canadian histo^5^ 



258 FATHER LACOMBE 1882 

Throughout the summer the entries in Father La- 
combe's diary indicate the steady routine of his try- 
ing ministry. One sentence — "I want to rest" — 
occasionally interjected tells a story of days too weari- 
some to note their events. One day in November he 
confides one cause of his weariness to the intimate 
little note-book: 

"My God, send me back again to my old Indian missions. 
I am longing for that." 

But his day of deliverance is still remote. The 
Archbishop can not release him. 

At Christmas he celebrated Midnight Mass in an 
abandoned sleep-house. The trader lent him cotton 
for decorations, and the navvies built a roof of ever- 
greens over the altar to symbolize the Cradle of Beth- 
lehem. Everyone within range of the lake lent 
themselves to aid with the rare joy of Christmas- 
tide. 

They were a rough lot of men separated there 
from all that they valued most on earth, but there 
was a heart-drawing power in the ancient rites cel- 
ebrated by this unique Blackrobe in his evergreen 
temple in the woods. 

When Father Lacombe went to Winnipeg in 
March, 1882, he learned that at last he might return 
to his Blackfeet. 

For several months Bishop Grandin had been 
urging this, for he still claimed Father Lacombe as 
his Vicar-General and a missionary of his diocese. 



1882 FATHER LACOMBE 259 

The Archbishop reluctant to part with Father 
Laconibe wrote Bishop Grandin on September 12, 
1881: 

"This dear Father desires to go to you, among your 
savages. ... If the state of his health had not pre- 
vented me I should have used him here with the Indians as 
you desire to use him. I have need as 3'ou have. 

"In fine, ray responsibilities as a Bishop do not permit me 
to send away an individual who does so much good, and al- 
though the work done in your diocese rejoices my heart, you 
understand that it is not the fulfilment of my first duty as a 
pastor. This you will admit — but we have a Superior com- 
mon to both of us: he alone has authority to do what you 
ask." 

It was decided that Father Lacombe should return 
M^est, and the Archbishop applied to the Canadian 
Provincial for another missionary priest. His reply 
to the Provincial's letter is interesting: 

"You say you have no one to send me at present ; but 
after an ordination you may have perhaps a newly-ordained 
priest to give me to replace — my 'premier counsellor, my ad- 
viser, my Vicar-General, a missionary who speaks four lan- 
guages, one who has thirty years of experience! Confess, 
mon cher, that this is not generous. . . . If I were suffi- 
ciently near you to embrace you en pincette, I assure you I 
would pinch you hard." 

On April 24th Father Lacombe resigned his post 
as chaplain to the Canadian Pacific construction- 
camps. He acknowledges to his diaiy-confidant : 



260 FATHER LACOMBE 1882 

"If I have had many difficulties and sorrows here I have 
also had many consolations." 

On the eve of his departure a fine team of horses 
and buekboard-wagon were driven out for his in- 
spection. Before he could guess his good fortune the 
generous contractors presented him with these and a 
tent. Their thoughtfulness thus provided him with 
transportation and lodging on his long drive across 
the prairies. 

On May 15, 1882, he left St. Boniface. He 
parted from his beloved Archbishop and confreres 
with regret, but lay down gladly the responsibilities 
of his post as Cure of St. Mary's. He felt he was 
turning his face away from the troublesome white 
newcomers, and that he should now go to his Black- 
feet to make them ready for the coming of the pale- 
faces. 




Old Fort Whoop-up, 1874. Near Lethbridge, Alta 




Even here were evidences or the white man's 
invasion ' ' 



On his return to the Indian field Father Lacombe 
saw a reprieve from uncongenial surroundings, such 
as he had surely merited after thirty years of devoted 
■work. His buoyant nature lifted to the tune of ex- 
pectation, and at fifty-six he felt himself entering on 
his work with the fresliness of his first years in the 
west. 

For eight days out from St. Boniface he travelled 
along the railway grade to Qu'Appelle mission. 
Here with the powers transferred by the invalid 
Archbishop he confirmed sixty children. His route 
now lay north across the prairies by Battleford, the 
seat of Government, and Fort Pitt. 

He had believed himself returning to his beloved 
wilderness, but he regretfully noted that even here 
were evidences of the white man's invasion. Out of 
old Pile-o'-Bones in the Qu'Appelle valley the infant 
settlement of Regina was stirring to life, and along 
the grassy cart-trails he passed groups of newcom- 
ers, fleeing from the plagues of grasshoppers and 
early frosts of ^Manitoba's pioneer period. 

As his buckboard rattled up the trail to the old 

headquarters of the Beaver District — ^the post where 

he had disembarked from York boats with Rowand 

in 1852 — he blinked increduously at a new Edmon- 

261 



262 FATHER LACOMBE 1882 

ton. The Big House — Rowand's Folly — had been 
torn down, and a new residence built outside the pal- 
isades on the hillcrest. 

Stockades, bastions and sentinel's gallery had all 
ingloriously given way to a low plank fence. Up on 
the hill log-shacks were set down in clearings. There 
was even the semblance of a village street at an elbow 
in the trail as it wound eastward up the valley from 
the Fort. It could boast a log schoolhouse and shops 
of free-traders. 

A telegraph wire ran into the village bringing mes- 
sages from the great Outside. More wonderful still 
to the man who had looked for the old wilderness— 
a tidy little printing-press was pubHshing weekly 
editions of a newspaper on sheets as large as note- 
paper! 

At St. Albert he f oimd another small village grow- 
ing up in the vicinity of The Bridge. . . . 
Where was his wilderness gone? 

He met his sister Christine here, for the first time 
since she had become the wife of Leon Harnois. 
The announcement of this marriage in 1875 had dis- 
tressed Father Lacombe, as one of his confreres — a 
merry Breton fond of a joke — had written him then 
that Harnois was one of the most reckless of the 
frontier-traders and adventurers, as a maimed hand 
and seven bullets somewhere in his body testified. 

Father Lacombe wrote Christine that if she con- 
tracted this marriage he would hold no further com- 
munication with her. . . . Mail moved slowly 



1882 FATHER LACOMBE 263 

between the Red River and Edmonton House then: 
the letter reached Christine only after her marriage. 

"And when it came," Leon Harnois told me thirty 
years later, "and Father Lestanc with his good heart 
said to us he would write Father Lacombe and tell 
him the truth, I only laughed and told him to say — 
'That is all right. We hold no further communica- 
tion, if you wish. ... I have your sister: that 
is all I want.' " 

For Leon Harnois — adventurer, ex-trader and In- 
dian fighter though he might be — was no desperado, 
but a debonair well-mannered young Frenchman of 
good principles, whose adventurous soul caused him 
to drift away from old Louisville years before. 

He was a nephew of Papineau's friend, that Lud- 
ger Duvernay whose Minerve had sounded the toc- 
sin of independence through the parishes of Quebec 
in 1837. And as one of the Harnois of Louisville 
he was not inchned to sue for favour, especially 
from one of such comparative insignificance as a 
brother-in-law. However Father Lacombe's hasty 
indignation had spent itself in the writing of the let- 
ter, and he was soon reconciled to the marriage. 

In the straggling groups of Indians met at Fort 
Edmonton in 1882, Father Lacombe found traces of 
what he feared. The buffalo were gone. The Cree 
braves were no longer free or independent. They 
were officially restricted to resen'es that were but 
patches on their old hunting-grounds. 

Their old motives of race-pride were gone. Their 



264 FATHER LACOMBE 1882 

faces and forms had taken on a cast of subjection and 
servility. They were a dark fringe on the ranks of 
Humanity. 

Father Lacombe could see the Indian of the mor- 
row disregarded, imcared-for, unwelcome, thrust 
back further and further from his old territory. 
His heart brooded over it all, and he felt himself 
called to give the remainder of his life to their pro- 
tection — as he had once given his years to their evan- 
gelization. 

He continued his journey south. Marvellous! 
. . . If the new Edmonton had impressed him 
with the advent of a new regime, he was stiU more 
astounded by what he saw as his buckboard and bron- 
chos carried him down the trail past the Red Deer 
River — through the borderland of the Cree and 
Blackfoot territories into the Bow River country. 

It was little more than twenty years since he had 
first come here with Alexis to nurse the Blackfeet 
through the epidemic : then the Crees and traders had 
warned him not to go among the murderous Black- 
feet. Even ten years ago he had traced his Tableau 
Catechisme on bark in the Blackfoot camp by the 
Bow and taught his childlike naked warrior friends 
from it. 

Now there were white men's horses grazing on the 
rolling prairies and long bridle-trails led to the shacks 
of young English and Canadian ranchers. In the 
beautiful valley where the Bow and Elbow meet he 
looked down to the slim palisades of Fort Calgary. 



1882 FATHER LACOMBE 265 

Here too he met a single red-coated horseman. 

The erstwhile missionary-Crusader who had ranged 
the plains armed only with his crucifix and Red 
Cross flag, could appreciate the grandeur of the fig- 
ure of this solitary Rider of the Plains. 

Two great agencies met there near Calgary — in 
the trim young horseman and the aging priest whose 
bronchos jogged as peacefully down the Trail as if 
they were the traditional fat ponies of the clergyman 
of civilized lands and their driver were as conmion- 
place. 

He drove in between the straggUng shacks and 
tents already spreading across the prairie in antici- 
patory welcome of the approaching railway. Here 
in addition to the mission of his confreres were the 
white barracks of the Mounted Pohce and trading- 
posts of the Company and I. G. Baker. Numerous 
prospectors and fortune seekers had drifted in to 
make a new home: the village radiated bright pros- 
pects. 

But there were sad associations about Calgary for 
the returned missionary . . . memories of his 
"fameux Alexis," who achieved the distinction of 
erecting the first building here. He left Edmonton 
in 1872, after Father Lacombe's departure for the 
east and built a house on the Elbow 25 miles from 
the junction of the Bow and Elbow. 

Since he could not accompany the master he loved 
with such doglike fidelity he found some consolation 
in settling here among the Blackfeet. He was re- 



866 FATHER LACOMBE 1882 

alizing as best he could the mission so long planned 
by Father Lacombe. His new home was at one of 
the shifting centres of population on the plains, a 
rendezvous for the Bloods occasionally visited by 
American whiskey-traders. 

The following year Alexis gave over his house to 
Fathers Scollen and Fourmond who came to estab- 
lish a permanent mission for the southern tribes. 
In 1874 a larger house was built here and another 
at Fort Macleod, where the new soldier-police were 
established. 

In 1875 Alexis, under the priests' direction built 
another house of logs at the junction of the Bow and 
Elbow, with a roof of spruce bark and door of buf- 
falo hide. It was here the Mounted Pohce received 
hospitality on their first arrival in Calgary. 

In the autumn a larger house was built by Alexis 
on the plateau across the river. That winter the 
buffalo roamed over the neighbouring plains in in- 
calculable numbers. Whenever the cupboard looked 
lean Alexis strapped on his snowshoes, set off with 
sleigh and rifle — and came back with delicious fresh 
buffalo-meat. 

But in the spring the longing for his old master 
grew too strong for him to rest contented there. He 
heard that Father Lacombe was in Winnipeg and 
would not return west. One day he told Father 
Doucet he must go and join him. 

Instead, poor Alexis went wandering over the 
prairie from camp to camp. His mind, previously 



1882 FATHER LACOMBE 267 

somewhat unbalanced, became unhinged in a form of 
religious mania with a belief in a divine mission for 
himself. He dechned to live in tlie Palace at St. 
Albert. . . . At last word came one day to 
Father Lacombe in Winnipeg that his Alexis had 
been found dead on the trail near the far-away mis- 
sion of Cold Lake. 

Two years later with the disappearance of the buf- 
falo, famine stalked over the plains: and in 1882 
Father Lacombe found that while most friendly re- 
lations had been established between the priests and 
Indians there had been little progress made in evan- 
gelizing them. His brethren had scarcely acquired 
fluent command of Blackfoot before the wretched 
Indians were painfully absorbed in a prolonged 
search for food. 

From Fort ISIacleod, where he was warmly w^el- 
comed by the INIounted Police officers he pushed on 
to the Blood Reserve. Here even the nonchalant 
Piegans and Bloods unbent to enthusiastic expres- 
sions of delight, when they learned that the Man-of- 
the-Good-Heart was going to give the rest of his 
days to them. His reception was hke the return of 
some great medicine-man to his tribe. 

Other Blackrobes might be their friends and they 
could respect and love them, but this fearless, high- 
spirited, tender old man was their own; and they 
loved him greatly. The Journal of INIacleod mis- 
sion, wliich record his re-entrj^ to what was now the 
Territory of Alberta, note that it was easy to recog- 



268 FATHER LACOMBE 1882 

nize the ardours and enthusiasm of the former shep- 
herd of the plains. A ten-years' sojourn in another 
milieu had not altered him. 

The mission-house, fifteen feet square only, now 
served as "a reception-hall for the Indians who 
flocked from all quarters to see their former mission- 
ary and talk with him of the good old times. The 
air was continually saturated with tobacco-smoke, 
and the calumet made the rounds continually." 

Father Lacombe pitched his tent. The resident 
missionary slept on hay on the earthen floor inside 
and cooked their meals in a clay fireplace. 

At Fort Macleod, where he located the headquar- 
ters of the Mission, Father Lacombe found only a 
bleak Police-post whose constabulary found their 
spice in life lay in exciting chases of whiskey-smug- 
glers and cattle-rustlers. 

The old forts of the whiskey-traders at Whoop- 
Up, Stand-Off, Slide-Out and Whiskey-Fort had 
ceased their more flagrant operations in 1874, when 
the Indians brought them word that red-coated 
Britishers were riding over the prairies to chase them. 
Yet some daring frontiersmen lingered to trade a 
little bad whiskey for buffalo-robes while these lasted 
— and later to satisfy the desire of the very thirsty 
whites coming out to the plains. 

The efforts of Father Lacombe and his fellow- 
workers were at first directed mainly toward the pro- 
tection of the Indians. Whenever and however they 
could they got whiskey to drink. Even poverty did 



1882 FATHER LACOMBE 269 

not secure them against the firewater, which they 
loved so fatally and which was rapidly completing 
the downfall begun by their loss of independence. 

There were always ways of obtaining liquor with 
or without money for men and women. In fact, the 
one great reproach repeatedly made by Chief Crow- 
foot against the whites was that liquor was contin- 
ually used by them in the demoralization of the In- 
dian woman. 

Following speedily upon the arrival of Father La- 
combe in 1882 a definite change came over the Black- 
foot mission-field. The Indians seemed to enter upon 
a new phase of existence in which they undoubtedly 
owed much to the firm direction of their Arsous-kitsi- 
rarpi and his lieutenant, Father Legal. 

In the latter, a new recruit to the western field, 
Father Lacombe found a personality as strong as his 
own. This meeting with Father Legal indeed was 
an event in his life as his meeting with Bishop Tache 
thirty years before had been. It marked the begin- 
ning of a friendship that was to endure for his life- 
time and in many ways contribute to his comfort in 
his latter days. 

The strong administrative powers of the young 
Breton aflforded the necessary complement to Father 
Lacombe's unusual abihty for planning new move- 
ments and securing the co-operation of everyone 
needful. As a result each enterprise they undertook 
was markedly successful. 

The two spent the winter together in the little log- 



270 FATHER LACOMBE 1882 

house on the Blood Reserve. When they had dug 
their potatoes in September they set about chinking 
the house with mud and laying a floor in it. This 
done they began work upon a Blackfoot dictionary, 
employing William Munroe — Piskan — as interpre- 
ter. 

In the afternoon Father Lacombe taught a class 
of fifteen children and a group of adults each even- 
ing. The mornings were devoted to the dictionary, 
which they completed before spring. During the win- 
ter they went to Macleod and there superintended the 
construction of a small mission-house. Whilst there 
the two priests occupied a log-house lent them by 
Col. Macleod, but which they also had to chink with 
moss and mud to keep out the elements. 

The coal areas in the vicinity of the Belly River 
were now about to be developed by an English com- 
pany in which Sir Alexander Gait was interested. 
The latter visited the west about this time, and as 
the Journal of the Blood Mission notes, Sir Alexan- 
der agreed to saw for his friend Father Lacombe 
10,000 feet of lumber from logs hauled to the Com- 
pany's mill. 

Father Lacombe could now enter upon a campaign 
of construction. He began with a building at Black- 
foot Crossing, but while here his summer plans were 
broken into by a virulent epidemic of erysipelas among 
the Blackfeet. He and his colleagues spent most of 
the summer tending to the sick Indians. His plans 
had so far progressed by September, however, that 



1882 FATHER LACOMBE 271 

visiting his Bishop then he could declare himself well 
satisfied with the year's work. 

He received about tliis time a letter from his mother 
which is the only one of hers remaining among his 
correspondence. The venerable woman was spending 
her last days in cheerful serenit}% and although close 
on to eighty was still knitting socks for her son. 

L'AssoMPTiON, Nov. 4. 

"My very dear Albert: I received your pleasant let- 
ter on October 20th, and it was very welcome. You may 
imagine the great joj' I felt in receiving it; for, voila, you 
are again back among your poor Indians. I am glad of 
this for your sake, because you have wished for so long to 
return to them. 

"I often journey in spirit to j'our poor cabin; although 
age creeps on me I hope to see you once more : but if this 
may not occur here below — there Above I know that we shall 
meet again. 

"... Do not be afraid to let me know of your work 
and cares. I am glad to be able to share your sorrows with 
you as well as your pleasures. 

"I can no longer see at all with that eye, but I am hoping 
that the right one will remain to me, for I can see as clearly 
with it as with the two. I read, sew and knit as before — I 
should like to send vou a little bundle of socks. . . ." 



VI 

The three great civilising forces of Western Can- 
ada — the strongest factors in its development from 
the days of Verandrye up to 1880 — were the Hud- 
son's Bay Company; the scores of French Oblates 
who had devoted their lives to civilising the Indians, 
and the Northwest Mounted Pohce. 

They were men of heroic stripe, all three types of 
trader, priest and constable: each deserving of the 
Homeric epic that should some day enshrine their 
deeds in a living monument. 

With the first large wave of immigration the Com- 
pany practically ceased to be a potent factor in 
western life. But promptly on the eclipse of the 
Big Company there emerged another power, which 
was also to exert a notable influence in the consolida- 
tion of the Dominion. 

This was the Canadian Pacific Railway, which 
separated the prairies forever from the hazy period of 
travoix and canoes. Already the steel head of the 
road was advancing on Calgary, justifying the faith 
of the men who had built it. 

The opulent latent spirit of the young Northwest 

was like the legendary Princess sleeping: this road 

the daring Prince that broke through every obstacle 

of rock and chasm on the rugged North Shore — then 

372 



1883 FATHER LACOMBE 273 

flung itself into the praii-ies lying in virgin enchant- 
ment. It wakened the Spirit of the land — and the 
transformation that followed forms the first chapter 
in the history of the New West. 

To Father Lacombe's impressionable mind the 
Canadian Pacific looming on the Calgary horizon 
made an unforgettable picture. Years later he 
lapsed into reminiscence in forceful French: 

"Hah! I would look long in silence at tliat road 
coming on — like a band of wild geese in the sky — 
cutting its way through the prairies; opening up the 
great country we thought would be ours for years. 
Like a vision I could see it driving my poor Indians 
before it, and spreading out behind it the farms, the 
towns and cities you see to-day. 

"No one who has not lived in the west since the 
Old-Times can realize what is due to that road — ^that 
C. P. R. It was Magic — like the mirage on the 
prairies, changing the face of the whole country. 

"We know of course it was not built without the 
hope of some day bringing in much money to its 
builders and directors — that is the way of mankind. 
But I say to j'ou of the men I met those first days of 
the road — there was more than money-making in their 
heads. 

"There was courage; yes, and daring. . . . 
Hah! that did make us all admire; and there was a 
great faith and pride in this country. They believed 
it held great possibilities, those men who fought so 
hard to carrj' that plan through, and they had the 



274 FATHER LACOMBE 1883 

prescience that is the gift only of the great men of 
every age. 

"Then the men who controlled it when it was built 
— the order, the discipline they demanded from their 
employes. . . . Smith, George Stephen, Van 
Home and Angus, hah! . . . 

"How we admired that man Van Hornel He was 
a Napoleon in the planning of his work, in his con- 
trol of it and in the attachment of the men who 
worked for him. . . . 'Politeness is business,' 
that was his maxim. He gave that road from end to 
end of the continent one spirit — like the old Company 
used to have from London to Oregon." 

Weathered frontiersmen grumbled that the railway 
would destroy all the freedom of the good old days: 
the red man looked on with awe and suspicion. One 
day Father Lacombe was called from Calgary to 
quiet the Blackfoot nation. These Indians were in- 
dignant that grading was being done upon their Re- 
serve without their permission. They threatened 
they would not submit to this invasion of what little 
land remained to them. 

Father Lacombe hurried there, and requested the 
railway-men to cease operations until he could settle 
with the Indians. With the confidence of ignorance 
they pooh-poohed his warning, and continued work. 

Meanwhile Father Lacombe hastened to the chief's 
camp with 200 pounds of tea and as much of sugar, 
flour and tobacco. Through his friend Crowfoot he 
called a council of warriors. He first "opened his 



1883 FATHER LACOMBE 275 

mouth" with the gifts; then urged them to permit 
the grading on their land. He promised them Gov- 
ernor Dewdney would come and arrange all with 
them. 

The Head-Chief insisted his braves should heed 
the words of a friend who had never lied to them, 
and after many rumbling threats the council ended 
satisfactorily. 

The construction-gangs proceeded peacefully with 
the grading, incredulous of any danger; unaware that 
but for Father Lacombe's intervention the construc- 
tion of the first Canadian transcontinental would have 
been attended ^ath deliberate bloodshed. 

The Governor came to the resei-i^e before long ac- 
companied by Col. JNIacleod. They formally ceded 
to the Blackfeet another portion of land in compen- 
sation for what had been taken by the road. 

Father Lacombe had returned west with the ex- 
pectation of spending his daj's on the plains with the 
Indians. A year later he found himself pastor at 
Calgary labouring with wliites as at St. Mary's in 
Wimiipeg. 

His disillusionment was complete when in August 
a newspaper was set up with western enterprise in 
a tent, and in the same month the first train reached 
Calga^J^ The arrival of this last was heralded by 
a telegram to Father Lacombe from George Stephen 
(later Lord Mountstephen ) the president of the 
Canadian Pacific, saving: 



276 FATHER LACOMBE 1883 

"Come to lunch with me to-morrow in my car at 
Calgary." 

Father Lacombe had known Mr. Stephen since 
1881 and at Rat Portage once advised him to build 
the road through the Pine River Pass. He traced the 
route he recommended upon a map hanging in Ste- 
phen's car, but while the directors present conceded 
his advice was good other counsels prevailed. 

Now in Calgary the president triumphantly re- 
minded Father Lacombe of his prophecy that the 
Company could not find a favourable pass over the 
mountains at the Bow. He rejoiced, too, that while 
his own car was within sight of the Rockies construc- 
tion-gangs were successfully pushing their way 
through the Kicking-Horse Pass.* 

At the luncheon the busy Cure of St. Mary's found 
himself in a rare company: a "pleiade d'hommes" he 
calls them in appreciation of their individual bril- 
liance. In this group of men who were binding Can- 
ada together with rails of steel were President 
Stephen, Donald Smith, Wilham Van Home, R. B. 
Angus and Count Hermann von Hohenlohe, after 
whose estates in Germany the nearby station of Glei- 
chen had recently been named. 

The repast was a pleasant one for many reasons. 
The directors were delighted with the progress made 
in construction. The missionary was charmed to en- 
joy again the company of men of such parts. m 

1 This Pass received its name from an accident occurring there to 
Dr. Hector of Palliser's party, and who was Father Lacombe's guest 
at Ste. Anne in 18S8. 



1884. FATHER LACOMBE 277 

This first train to Calgary marked an occasion, 
and was celebrated with toasts and merry speeches. 
The cream of the daj^ came at last: INIr. Stephen re- 
signed as president of the Canadian Pacific and upon 
motion of ]Mr. Angus Father Lacombe — whose serv- 
ices, as chaplain and again on the Blackfoot Reserve, 
were gratefully recalled — was then unanimously 
voted to fill the position. For one hour the pictur- 
esque missionary of the plains was by courtesy and 
vote of the executive the President of Canada's 
greatest corporation. 

Father Lacombe has always rejoiced in a graceful 
tour d' esprit. He promptlj^ accepted the honour and 
the President's chair — and once there he mischiev- 
ously nominated Mr. Stephen to the rectorship of St. 
Mary's. The election was proceeded with amid 
laughter and applause, and the ex-President accepted 
his new dignity with a glance over the village and the 
simple speech : 

"Poor souls of Calgary, I pity you!" 

A pleasant echo of this luncheon-party is had in 
a photograph and note which Father Lacombe re- 
ceived soon after from Cardinal von Hohenlohe: 

"ScHiLLiNGFUEEST, October 18, 1883. 
"Very Reverend Father: 

"My cousin Hermann tells me that you desire ni}' photo- 
graph. I hasten to send it to you, recommending myself to 
your prayers. I have the honour to be, 

"Your very devoted servant, 

"G. Cardinal vox Hohenlohe." 



278 FATHER LACOMBE 1884 

The luncheon that day in August was a cheery so- 
cial affair, but the day did not pass without its serious 
moments of discussion. In these was mention of a 
plan to bring out other French settlers to the west. 
The one primary need of these solitudes and of the 
traversing railway was inhabitants. Mr. Stephen de- 
sired Father Lacombe's co-operation in the work. 

The plan there agreed upon is outlined in a letter 
written by Stephen from Montreal on January 25, 
1884, to Father Lacombe at Ottawa: 

"Now, as to my proposed French colony, I do not know 
that it is necessary for me to say anything more than that I 
will be ready to expend the sum of $500 on the homestead of 
each of the 50 families it is proposed to settle, taking a lien 
on the homestead for the repayment of the money at such 
times and such interest. . . ." 

as agreed upon. He suggested that houses be built 
for the settlers after Father Lacombe had arranged 
with the Interior Department for the reception of the 
newcomers. 

Here we have in 1884, between George Stephen 
and Father Lacombe, the idea of the ready-made 
farm which attained successful realization in the Bow 
valley in 1909. 

Several letters of this period from half-breeds indi- 
cate that one of Father Lacombe's new duties was 
unofficial arbitrator in horse-thefts. 

This crime was the chief plague of western life. 
The Crees sent protests to Father Lacombe that his 



1884. FATHER LACOMBE 279 

people in the south were stealing their horses, and 
the Blackfeet went either to the jMounted Police or to 
their old missionary. In the suj^ine days on which 
these Indian warriors had fallen a brave might no 
longer seek revenge on the war-path. 

After a theft concerning which Father Lacombe 
made diligent enquiries through a trusty Metis he 
finally sent the man to the Crees of Red Deer Cross- 
ing. The INIetis reported: 

"They know nothing of the horses stolen from j'our people, 
the Blackfeet !" 

In a second letter he assures the priest in his almost 
untranslatable patois that : 

"Since the Spring the Crees here have stopped this business 
of horse-stealing that they used to carry on with the Black- 
feet ; but among themselves they continue to steal. There 
was one of them caught. They sent him to Winnipeg to 
prison for five years. The Government is very hard on 
business of that sort — it is reported at the Red Deer 
Crossing that twenty-five Piegans are in prison for stealing 
horses. . . ." 

— indicating that the Police not only maintained the 
law, but spread a very wholesome fear of punishment 
through the Reserves. 

On one occasion a Cree who lived north of the Red 
Deer lost his entire band of horses. He promptly had 
recourse to Father Lacombe, and the almost illegible 
scrawl written for him is very quaint. 



«80 FATHER LACOMBE 1884 

"Red Deee Ceossing. 
"Rev. Fere Lacombe: 

"I am very angry because some young Blackfoot men came 
to steal my horses when I was camped quietly here among my 
friends. They say, these men, that they came at night in- 
tending to steal back the horses lifted by the Crees from them 
at the Cypress Mountains. But they were lying for nothing, 
says Gabriel Leveille who came in yesterday from the Hunt; 
and he passed by the Cypress Mountains. 

"You who are down at the Old Man's River, I pray you to 
take some trouble to find and return my horses to me." 

All of these communications are significant of the 
new spirit abroad on the plains, where was now a 
definite form of government by the whites, with the 
details still sketchy. 

At Calgary, where the town-site was still unsur- 
veyed, men hurried to secure locations with an idea 
of making fortunes out of town-lots. The air was 
full of rumours about the location of the town ; no one 
knew definitely, but each man squatted on the spot 
he considered likely to be chosen. 

In the closing months of 1883 Father Lacombe and 
Father Doucet as priests in charge of the mission 
claimed not only squatter's rights for the mission- 
buildings, but as male citizens of the Dominion they 
felt themselves each entitled to a homestead. Father 
Lacombe accordingly selected two quarter-sections 
about the old and new missions on either bank of the 
river. 

A few of the newcomers who were building where 



1884 FATHER LACOMBE 281 

thej' chose set up shacks upon his homestead, refusing 
to admit his right to hold it over them. Father La- 
combe warned them to move off; thejf^ persisted. 

"You priests, do you want all the country? I warn 
you, you can't have this bit," said one to him — with 
probably the idea that the priest's frock prevented 
him from locating a homestead as every other man on 
the ground hoped to do. 

With resistance growmg Father Lacombe felt he 
must secure his holding, and as the claim could not 
be registered outside of OttaAva he decided to go there. 
There was no time to wait for permission from his 
Superior — without which no Oblate or other commu- 
nity-member makes an important step. Father La- 
combe, the advisor of Bishops for fifteen j^ears, took 
on himself now the authority of a Superior and left 
for Ottawa. 



VII 



f 



Sir David MacPherson was Minister of the In- 
terior then. One morning as he sat in his office shut 
off from the commonplace world by noiseless baize 
doors and the imposing quiet of long Gothic corridors, 
a priest in a dusty black cassock was ushered in to 
him. 

The priest's hat and stout umbrella were equally 
shabby, but the strong frame, the statuesque face and 
long straight silvering hair would have been remark- 
able anywhere. 

The doughty Scotch-Canadian was impressed, and 
curious. The eagle eye and commanding profile 
of the visitor were at variance with his modest bearing 
and studiously respectful speech. But MacPherson 
understood when he heard his visitor's name. . . . 
Pere Lacombe. ^ 

This then was Pere Lacombe; the very name car-^ 
ried weight. MacPherson had not met him before, 
but the fame of the pioneer was already spread over 
the official world of Ottawa. 

The plainsman laid his case before the Minister, 
It sounded reasonable: Sir David felt inclined to com- 
ply with his request. But the dignity of Govern 
ments must be upheld — delays and red-tape being the 
traditional safeguards. Father Lacombe was in 
282 



I 



1884 FATHER LACOMBE 283 

formed that his request would receive most favour- 
able consideration, and if he returned in a few days he 
would receive definite confirmation of this. 

That did not meet Father Lacombe's wishes at all. 
Each day that passed meant more likelihood of new- 
comers building on his land, and the pihng up of 
abuse or inconvenience for poor timid Father Doucet 
■ — ^"God's lamb." 

His next statement, blandly made, took away Sir 
David's breath. 

"Non, monsieur, I cannot go until I receive that 
settlement of our land. I came hundreds of miles to 
you just for this. I will wait here with your permis- 
sion. ... I am used to camping on the prairie, 
on the floor — any^vhere. ... I will just camp 
here until I get my papers!" 

He looked about him. After the mud-chinked 
shack at ^Macleod or the shedlike house in Calgary 
tliis office was regal. He seated himself with the air 
of one who settles himself comfortably for a length 
of time. . . . 

Sir David felt the force of a personality quite irre- 
sistible, and let the red-tape bandages of dignity 
relax. He immediately wrote out a guarantee of the 
homestead locations on the sections indicated by 
Father Lacombe. The patents for the land were to 
follow when the conditions were fulfilled. 

The westerner in bowing himself out from the 
courtly MacPherson was as shabby a figure as when 
he came; but he carried himself hke a chief return- 



284. FATHER LACOMBE 1884. 

ing from a victory. . . . One wonders what ex- 
ploits might have been his, cast in another mould of 
the frontiersman — the adventurer instead of the 
priest ! 

He hurried to telegraph his good news to Father 
Doucet; then went to Montreal. Here he did a 
quaint stroke of business: upon his own initiation he 
had hundreds of statuettes of Archbishop Tache cast 
from a mould by young Louis Herbert, and sold to 
that statesman-prelate's numerous admirers. The 
proceeds he turned over to the missions of his friend 
at St. Boniface, who was greatly amused and touched 
by his new enterprise "ni matchi Albert." 

Whilst in Montreal he issued a letter to the priests 
of Quebec begging them for books from their library : 

"I will say from experience that one can endure well 
enough a poor dwelling, coarse food and coarser manners ; 
but to have few or no books— you will agree with me that 
this is something to which a priest can resign himself with 
difficulty. You will say to me perhaps — 'Why not buy 
some.'" Ah, yes, voila, a just question. . . . But we 
have no means to buy them. That is why I take the liberty 
of knocking at your door." 

Books literally streamed upon him, the Cures joy- 
fully finding a place for their antiquated numbers, 
and Father Lacombe returned happy. He wired 
ahead for his brethren to meet him at Calgary to share 
his good fortune, and Father Legal records in his 
Mission Journals that their Superior returned — 



1884 FATHER LACOMBE 285 

"successful to his heart's content" in all his affairs — 
homesteads, scliools and books. 

The homesteads were divided into portions — for a 
future church, hospital, academy and cemetery; while 
the proceeds of town lots later sold from them fur- 
nished the diocese with money to erect buildings. 

Calgary meanwhile was taking shape as a town 
with marvellous rapidity. Its population numbered 
five hundred, and new citizens arrived weekly. Men 
foregathered and elected a town Council, which 
promptly crossed swords with the railway company 
to which the little town owed its existence: there was 
no lack of spirit in the new frontier. 

With the white population monthly taking a 
stronger hold upon the land the estabhshment of In- 
dian Industrial Schools became the dominant idea of 
Father Lacombe. 

Bishop Grandin had originated a campaign for 
schools in the mission he laid upon Father Lacombe 
in 1872. . It appealed to him as the final phase of his 
own work for the west, and though enfeebled now he 
determined to carry it through at any cost to liimself . 

The bishop insisted that the few schools in exist- 
ence should be developed and extended, teaching the 
Indian boy to till the soil and his sister to keep a 
house : in this way to reach the adult through the chil- 
dren. To do this schools must be conducted on a 
large scale. But how? For ten years he had ex- 
hausted every effort to secure money for this in Can- 
ada and France. He was still without means. 



g86 FATHER LACOMBE 1884 

It was then that Father Lacombe, growing in 
worldly wisdom and knowledge of public life, im- 
parted to the bishop the idea of petitioning the Gov- 
ernment for funds. These might appropriately be 
had from the Indian funds held in trust by the Gov- 
ernment. 

Father Lacombe, though corporally in Winnipeg 
during the seventies had been much in spirit back on 
the plains, and at every feasible opportunity was 
helping Bishop Grandin to forward their school 
project. The plan was communicated to Archbishop 
Tache and the latter met the bishop early in 1883 at 
Ottawa to press the educational needs of the Indians 
upon the Government. 

That spring the ministers' offices and the corridors 
of the Parliament Buildings were for some days 
haunted by first one and then another of the western 
prelates. Representations were also made to the 
Prime Minister by Father Lacombe and by Sir Al- 
exander Gait at the request of his missionary^ friend. 

The result of these combined efforts was that the 
Government authorized the establishment of three In- 
dustrial Schools — at Dunbow, south of Calgary, at 
Battleford and at Qu'Appelle. The Government 
agreed to erect the buildings, pay the principal a fair 
salary and make a per capita grant toward the main- 
tenance of the pupils. 

Sir John Macdonald writing from Riviere du Loup 
on August 1, 1883, to a friend of Father Lacombe — 
who forwarded the letter to him — says: 



1884 FATHER LACO.MBE 287 

"... I am down here getting a little rest and fresh 
air, but amuse myself occasionally by looking over my cor- 
respondence in arrear. 

''With respect to the most important of these, the estab- 
lishment of Industrial Schools among the Indians, I may say 
that all difficulties have been overcome and three Industrial 
Schools are to be established — one Protestant at Battleford 
where the government buildings will be available, and two 
Roman Catholic schools — one under the patronage of the 
Archbishop and the other of Bishop Grandin. The Order in 
Council has been passed. ]\Ir. Dewdney has been instructed 
to take steps for their establishment and Sir Hector Langevin 
has called the attention of their Lordships to the importance 
of the Principals or Heads of the schools being good adminis- 
trators. Learning and pietj', however necessary, are not all- 
sufficient. Good business ability is, if possible, a greater 
requisite than either of the other two. . . ." 

In 1884 Qu'Appelle and Dunbow schools were 
opened. Father Lacombe, although still supervising 
the southern mission-field, was given direct control of 
Dunbow school. He had already chosen the site and 
directed the construction of the building. On its 
completion he rode out among the Bloods and Pie- 
gans asking the parents to send their boys to the 
school. Father Legal and Jean L'Heureux did a 
like serAnce at Blackfoot Crossing. 

The Indians however absolutely refused to part 
with the younger boys for whom the schools were 
intended. Eventually after much persuasion the mis- 
sionaries succeeded in assembling seventeen boys from 
15 to 17 vears old. 



288 FATHER LACOMBE 1884 

Father Lacombe received the boys at Dunbow. As 
a preliminary they were shown to a room containing 
washtubs. They were directed to bathe. Their long 
hair was combed by Father Lacombe and his assist- 
ant, for the parents had refused to have it cut. New 
clothes were supplied to each boj^ and his own tat- 
tered garments rolled away in a bundle to be returned 
when he went home again. 

About as much at home as wildcats in a beaver's 
well-ordered domicile the young Indians were given 
a supper which they appreciated more than the 
grooming. Then they were sent out to the prairie 
for a playhour. This was Bedlam. 

The hd of a repression imposed by awe of their 
surroundings was thrown off, and in all his experience 
of Indian children Father says he never witnessed 
anything like this. The boys ran wild in a riot of 
horseplay. . . . But a bell rang; and at its un- 
wonted soimd the poor young mavericks of civiHza- 
tion were rounded up and sent to a dormitory to sleep. 

Here were compensations for the broken playhour. 
. . . The stairway was a novelty, and the boys 
found rare amusement in running surreptitiously up 
and down the steps. In the dormitory they were in- 
vited to undress, and each put in possession of a httle 
bed decently equipped with bedding. After the first 
shock of surprise there was another Carnival for the 
seventeen dusky human mavericks! 

They laughed and sang, and with all the Indians' 



1884 FATHER LACOMBE 289 

power of ridicule made light of the odd furniture. 
They examined the beds, explored them above and 
below and jDunched their pillows. Some crawled un- 
der the beds and found there a new vantage-point 
from which to hurl missiles and ridicule at those who 
ventured to lie on the beds. 

There was no sleep in the dormitory for hours. 
Father Lacombe, old now to the ways of Indians 
— sympathetic always to youth, merely controlled 
them from his oa\ti apartment ■n'ithout any effort to 
repress them. Through the night however he was 
awakened by a hilarious rout in the hall below the 
stairs, where some of the boys had elected to finish 
their frolic. 

On the following day the teacher went about or- 
ganizing a class. With the consuming curiosity of 
their race the boys were interested in its first session. 
They were then and always reverent and quiet at 
prayers — but when their first recess came there was 
pandemonivmi again, and reluctance to return to the 
class. 

It was so during all the early weeks of the school. 

"You could open the doors and look inside and see 
— Hell that first winter," said Father Lacombe twen- 
ty-five years later. 

The main difficulty was that these boys were too 
old to be broken to school ways, but they were the 
only boys available. All winter they continued to 
be as wild as young elk. Sometimes they would turn 



290 FATHER LACOMBE 1884 

the playground into a battlefield; more often they 
would shp way to a big hill a mile distant and play 
there well away from the shadow of the school. 

Occasionally the teacher on ringing the bell for his 
charges would not find one in sight. In an instant, 
so it seemed, they had hidden themselves about the 
yard, ready to lope off to the prairie if the teacher 
would not come out to round them up. During the 
winter some of the boys ran home. When spring 
came they all clamoured to be free. 

Father Lacombe went north and obtained boys 
from Cree reserves. By degrees the Blackfoot elders 
acquired clearer ideas of boarding-schools. They al- 
lowed a few of the younger children to go with Father 
Lacombe — some girls as well as boys; and the work 
was considered established. 

In this way the first Indian Industrial school of 
Alberta took shape. 

The Grey Nuns who had volunteered as teachers 
quickly secured control of the yoiinger pupils and 
held their affections. Little by little a regular school 
routine was formed, the children lending themselves 
more readily to manual training than to books after 
the first novelty wore off. 

This was the beginning of a system that has since 
spread throughout the west, an honest endeavour by 
men with the best interests of the Indians at heart to 
solve their problem. The schools were designed 
to bridge for the Indian the Transition stage from 
barbarism, so that at least the children's children of 



1884. FATHER LACOMBE 291 

the warriors of Natous and Sweet-Grass should be fit 
to cope with the Caucasian civilization that threatened 
to overwhelm their race. 

In the autumn of 1884, after this Industrial school 
was opened, Father Lacombe as Superior of the whole 
southern district had the delight of welcoming Arch- 
bishop Tache to Calgary. 

Aware of the Archbishop's invalid state and antici- 
pating his anxiety to witness the marvellous develop- 
ment in the remoter west the president of the 
Canadian Pacific had courteously placed a private 
car at his disposal. On September 21st he arrived, 
and found there to welcome him — Father Lacombe 
and Father Remas, who had made a retreat with him 
in the northern woods thirty years before; Fathers 
Legal, Doucet, Claude and Foisy, with several laj^- 
brothers. 

The venerable prelate heard the storj^ of each. He 
marvelled. He could scarcely credit that this or- 
ganized district with new buildings at each mission- 
point and prospectively valuable property in the town 
was the same field to which Father Lacombe had re- 
turned two years earher. 

There had been then only two missionaries and two 
log-huts, mud-chinked and floorless. To-day . . . ! 
The Archbishop looked about him, and recognized 
the old powers and organizing genius of his friend — 
"ni matchi Albert." 



VIII 

The frontier town of Calgary was rapidly rising 
from its first semblance of a tented village. Primi- 
tive restaurants, pool-rooms and shops lined the Main 
Street with false fronts and aggressive signs behind 
which the newcomers laid plans for future fortunes. 

Meanwhile elsewhere on the plains, in the homes 
of the Metis Old-Timers, there was much sullen dis- 
content. 

The insurrection of 1885 was impending. 

It was no summer thunder-cloud coming out of 
clear skies. Grievances had been rankUng for at least 
five years. Repeatedly in letters and interviews the 
Saskatchewan Metis, and Bishop Grandin in their 
name, had urged the Canadian Government to meet 
their claims to land-scrip similar to that granted to 
Manitoba Metis ; likewise to initiate measures ^ for 

1 The formal list of claims of the Metis included : 

(1) The division of the North-West Territories into Provinces; 

(2) A grant to the Metis of Saskatchewan of the territorial privileges 
conceded to the Metis of Manitoba; 

(3) That persons already located be secured in title to their hold- 
ings; 

(4) The sale of 500,000 acres of Government land, the proceeds of 
which were to be devoted to the establishment of schools, hospitals 
and other institutions for the Metis — together with a grant of seed and 
agricultural implements to the poorer of their number; 

(5) The reservation of 100 townships of land to be distributed in 
time to the children of the Metis; 

292 



1885 FATHER LACOMBE 293 

the improvement of the Indians' condition as well as 
their own. 

Differences with minor officials of the government 
and instances of misunderstanding concerning their 
right to hold land on which they were located were 
causes of irritation among the JMetis. A conscious- 
ness that they were retreating before the dominant 
newcomers had set the hidden fox of envy gnawing 
the vitals of a race still free and proud: the Federal 
Government neglected their communications. . . . 
Here was sufficient material to fire a jNIetis rising. 

IManitoba INIetis, who had sold their holdings to 
unscrujiulous white men for trivial amounts, had 
emigrated in poverty to the Saskatchewan. They 
were noAV living examples of what their brethren 
might expect in the future. , . . The Saskatch- 
ewan ISIetis resolved to make a stand for themselves 
and their children. 

Gabriel Dumont, a noted hunter and relative of 
Louis Riel, a recklessly brave, dashing and hospit- 
able fellow, was now pushed to the leadership of the 
French-]Metis ; while James Isbister of the Scotch- 
Metis made common cause with him against the new 
Regime. The united halfbreeds held an assembly in 
]May and there delegated Dumont, Isbister and others 
to go into IMontana and bring Riel back to lead them. 

Louis Riel was then employed peaceably earning a 

(6) A grant of at least $1,000 for the establishment of an Academy 
at each settlement of Metis; 

(7) The improvement of the conditions of the Indian nations. 



f 



294. FATHER LACOMBE 1885 

livelihood for his family as a schoolmaster in the par- 
ish of St. Pierre. He did not leap with enthusiasm 
to the offer of leadership at first, but he finally made 
up his mind to accept. Honore Jaxon (Henry 
Jackson), the young Ontario aide of the Metis and 
graduate of Toronto University, joined Riel on his 
arrival in Canada and assisted him in framing what 
they termed a constitutional agitation.^ 

A number of white men were now interested in the 
movement, urging on the more ignorant Metis. 
Some of these were probably moved by envy of the 
newcomers' progress. It is stUl believed along the 
Saskatchewan that others interested themselves in 
promoting agitation in order that the country might 
be flooded with negotiable script. Out of this the 
Saskatchewan man of affairs might hope to make a 
fortune as easily as his prototype of the Red River 
had done. 

When word came to Bishop Grandin that Riel was 
again in Canada, and greeted by the Metis as a Na- 
poleon returning from Elba, the bishop hurried 
down to Prince Albert. For fifteen days he visited 

1 Jaxon stated to me in Edmonton in October, 1909, that Isbister 
and Dumont brought Riel letters from leading white men among the 
old-timers and business men of the Saskatchewan valley, urging him to 
come back to curb the ambitions of the newcomers and secure the rights 
of his own people. 

These letters Jaxon saw burned at Prince Albert at the close of 
the Rebellion before he iled to the United States and freedom. A 
prominent statesman of Western Canada also informed me that he 
knew of those letters held by Jaxon and burned by a relative of the 
latter at Prince Albert in order that the writers might not be com- 
promised should an investigation be held. 



I 



1885 FATHER LACOMBE 295 

among the Metis, pointing out the dangers of a 
course that might lead to combat and the forfeiture of 
all rights instead of securing them. 

Seriously alarmed by what he had seen and heard 
the bishop wrote a formidable warning to the Prime 
Minister: 

"I have seen the principal Metis of the place, those whom 
we might call the ringleaders ; and I am grieved to real- 
ise that they are not the most culpable. They are pushed 
forward and excited not only by the English half-breeds 
but by inhabitants of Prince Albert — persons of some 
prominence and opposed to the Government, who hope with- 
out doubt to profit by the regrettable steps of the Metis. 
These must certainly be strongly supported to act in this way 
without the knowledge of their priests, who have now been 
represented to them as sold to the Canadian Government. 

"It will surely be easy for your government to suppress 
this sort of a revolt — which might later have painful conse- 
quences ; because the Metis can do as they please with the In- 
dians. 

"How many times have I not addressed myself in letters 
and conversation to Your Honour — without being able to ob- 
tain anything but fine words . . . ! I have written at 
their dictation the complaints and demands of this discon- 
tented people ; I send them to you again under cover with this. 

"I blame the Metis and I have not spared them reproaches. 
But I will permit myself to say to Your Honour with all pos- 
sible respect, that the Canadian Government is itself not free 
of blame ; and if I had the same authority among its members 
that I have with the Metis I should tell them so — more re- 
spectfully doubtless, but with the same frankness. . . . 



296 FATHER LACOMBE 1885 

"I implore Your Honour not to be indifferent to this and 
to act so that this evil may be checked." 

He gi'avely warned Sir Hector Langevin: 

". . . Once pushed to the limit, neither pastor nor 
bishop can make them listen to reason, and they may pro- 
ceed to acts of extreme violence. I beg you then to in- 
stantly employ all your influence to secure for them what- 
ever is just in their demands." 

The bishop's letters were written in September, 
1884 — -in ample time for the Ottawa Government to 
have averted the Rebellion of 1885. Ottawa did not 
unbend. Why they did not — why they paid as little 
heed to this solemn warning as they did to Tache and 
MacTavish in 1869 has gone down into the grave 
with the men who were in authority then. 

On March 18, Riel, whose weak brain was again 
unbalanced by excitement, called his followers to 
arms. He had already in his madness set hmiself up 
as a sort of Pontiff, had a new scheme of religion 
planned and proposed to reorganize the Cathohc 
Church and reform Canadian Government in the west. 

Swiftly following upon Dmnont's encounter with 
Crozier at Duck Lake came news of Big Bear's dep- 
redations and the massacre at Frog Lake, where the 
Agent Quinn, Father Fafard and Father Marchand 
were murdered. 

Canada was now awake to the urgency of the Metis 
question! 



1885 FATHER LACOMBE 297 

Father Lacombe hearing the news telegraphed into 
Calgary mourned again that he had not been left 
on the plains in 1872 to continue the work of Chris- 
tianizing the Indians. Had he done so the mission- 
aries would have had Big Bear and Poundmaker un- 
der their influence to a degree that even Dumont or 
Kiel could not prevail against. 

Chief Crowfoot he felt confident could be relied 
upon to help him keep the southern tribes at peace. 
He wired this assurance to Sir John JNIacdonald, who 
stated ' in the Commons on March 26 : 

"I had a telegram from the Rev. Father Lacombe 
to-day, and he vouches for the loyalty of all the Black- 
foot Indians at Carlton and the west." 

The Prime JNIinister's idea of western locations 
seems to have been verj' inaccurate. The news he 
conveyed was received with applause however. 

Father Lacombe's confidence in his Blackfeet was 
presently tried. On the evening of March 27th 
grave rimiours spread through Calgary of fatalities 
near Prince Albert. Though remote from the dis- 
turbance, the townspeople grew afraid. 

It was kno\\Ti that emissaries from the Saskatch- 
ewan Metis and Crees had been skulking in the 
camps of the Blackfeet for some time. It was real- 
ized too that if the Blackfeet and their alhes, the 
best fighters on the plains and the least docile of all 
western Indians, should unite M'ith Kiel they could 

1 Debates, H. of C. (March 24), 1885, Vol. 2, p. 745. 



298 FATHER LACOMBE 1885 

temporarily destroy white settlement in the country. 
Calgary had reason to be cautious. 

A Home Guard of 104 men was organized, and 
the leaders telegraphed Ottawa and Regina for arms. 
That evening the almost incredible news was flashed 
from Langdon station that the Blackfeet were about 
to attack Calgary. The Guard was sworn in for 
service; armed patrols were set to watch the town by 
night. 

The routine of life was rudely broken; people 
gathered in groups on the street to discuss the shock- 
ing news. Timid hearts could see visions of the 
painted and feather-decked Blackfeet riding down on 
them. Excitement was intense in the little tovpn. 

In their extremity the people of Calgary turned 
that night to Father Lacombe. He agreed to go 
out to pacify the Indians, though protesting there 
was no truth in the rumour. 

"That's only humbug!" he said. "Crowfoot 
would never let his braves attack Calgary." 

Men shook their heads. Not all of Calgary shared 
his belief then in the Head-Cliief. 

The following morning at dawn Father Lacombe 
departed in an engine lent him by the Canadian Pa- 
cific. Arrived at the Crossing he sent for Crowfoot, 
who enquired in amaze the cause of a visit so early on 
Sunday morning. 

"Oh, it is lonesome in Calgary without my Black- 
feet. I want to visit you, and meet Father 
Doucet." 



1885 FATHER LACOMBE 299 

"He gave me the news of the camp," Father La- 
combe recalls. "Then he asked if that news was as 
he heard — that the Crees and Metis of the Saskatch- 
ewan were killing all the whites. This is what the 
Cree runners from Pomidmaker's camp had told 
him! 

" 'A few have been killed,' I said, 'but this is a 
small fight that will soon pass.' " 

Father Lacombe then had the camp assembled. 
He gave them news of the rebellion, telling them 
what fools the Crees were to fight the white people 
who had so many big g-uns and armies they could 
send into the country. For even if the Crees con- 
quered now. . . . 

"Those strong white people would come back like 
a great sea that could not be stopped and the Indian 
nations that killed their brethren would be swept off 
the earth." 

Crowfoot was a man of reason. He exhorted his 
warriors, took counsel with them — and finally prom- 
ised Father Lacombe that his Blackfeet would on no 
consideration take up arms in this rebellion. 

"Then," says Father Lacombe, "I decided to send 
a telegram to Sir John saying the Blackfeet would 
be loyal to the last. . . . By-and-bye I heard 
from one of my friends at Ottawa that the telegram 
was brought to Sir John when they sat in Council. 
At once he read it to his colleagues, and they clapped 
their hands with pleasure. They had not much good 
news from the west in those days!" 



I 



300 FATHER LACOMBE 1885 

"Soon after that a telegram came from Sir Jabi? 
telling me to do anything I liked concerning the In- 
dians — to make them keep the peace : the Government 
would approve everything." 

Sir John evidently had profited by a second bitter 
lesson. The "big chiefs of Ottawa" had at last 
glimpsed their own limitations as rulers of the people 
by the voice of the people. They could now appre- 
ciate both the danger of the western situation and the 
good intentions of the missionaries — as weU as their 
influence over the Indians. 

Father Lacombe's report on his return from the 
Crossing on Monday, March 30, was reassuring to 
Calgary ; as noted in George Murdoch's terse diary — 

"Lacombe came to-night from the Crossing and reported 
all well." 

The same day Sir John Schultz, who had travelled 
a long way from the Red River physician of 1870, 
wrote him from Ottawa. The letter is significant of 
the attitude of Canadian public men toward Father 
Lacombe at this period. It likewise reflects the fat- 
uous complacency of the government, which will not 
recognize the results of its own dilatoriness : 






"The Senate, Ottawa, March 30, 1885 
"Dear Father Lacombe: 

"Since I had the pleasure of hearing from you or writing^ 
to you, what sad events have occurred in the northwest; and 
though our information is very meagre as yet, I am afraid 
that a great mistake has been made in coming to armed col 



i 



1885 FATHER LACOMBE 301 

lision with Kiel's men before an effort could be made to obtain 
a peaceable solution of the difficulties. 

"Of course we cannot judge verj' well at this distance, but 
that is my opinion ; and I told one of the Government yester- 
day that had no collision occurred and had they tried to avail 
themselves of your services, so respected as you are by Indian, 
half-breed and white alike — you might have solved the dif- 
ficulty with not unreasonable concessions on the part of the 
Government. 

"At the last meeting of the House of Commons I was glad 
to see that Sir John quoted you as high authority for the 
hope and belief that the Indians would remain quiet. I took 
the liberty of recommending that your services should be, if 
possible, secured at once and if they are I feel very sure that 
my modest friend. Father Lacombe, will show himself of great 
service to the peace of our young Dominion. . • ." 

Following upon his interview with Crowfoot both 
Father Lacombe and the Government thought it well 
there should be an impressive peace-contract made 
witli the Blackfeet. Consequently about the middle 
of April Governor Dewdney came from Regina to 
Blackfoot Crossing, accompanied by Father La- 
combe, his personal suite and Captain Denny acting 
for the Indian Department. 

The good-will of the Indians was that day con- 
veyed to the Canadian Government in a lengthy 
telegram inspired by Father Lacombe and signed by 
Crowfoot. The practical result of the day's cere- 
monies is had from an address ' of Sir John Mac- 
donald in the House of Commons: 

1 Debates, House of Commons, 1895, Vol. 2, p. 1038. 



302 FATHER LACOMBE 1885 

"I may as well now inform the House that there 
is no further news from the North-West that would 
interest the House except the fact that Mr. Dewdney, 
the Lieutenant-Governor, accompanied by the Rev. 
Father Lacombe, missionary to the Blackfeet, has 
held a meeting with the great band of the Blackfeet, 
headed by their Chief Crowfoot. 

"Father Lacombe says they had a most enthusi- 
astic reception, that the Indians pledged their loy- 
alty to the utmost extent, and I have received a tel- 
egram signed by Crowfoot, which I will read. It is 
not in Blackfoot: 

'Fkom Blackfoot Crossing, via Gleichen, N. W. T. 

'11th April, 1885. 

'On behalf of myself and people I wish to send through 
you to the Great Mother the words I have given to the Gov- 
ernor at a Council here, at which all my minor chiefs and 
young men were present. We are agreed and determined to 
remain loyal to the Queen. Our young men will go to work 
on the Reserves and will raise all the crops they can, and we 
hope the Government will help us to sell what we cannot 
use. . . . 

'Should any Indians come to our Reserve and ask us to 
join them in war we will send them away. 

'The words I sent by Father Lacombe I again send: 'We 
will be loyal to the Queen whatever happens.' I have a copy 
of this, and when the trouble is over will have it with pride 
to show to the Queen's officers: and we leave our future in 
your hands. , . , 

'Ceoweoot.' " 



I 



1885 FATHER LACOMBE 303 

To Uiis Sir John telegraphed the reply: 

"The good words of Crowfoot are appreciated by the big 
Chiefs at Ottawa. The loyalty of the Blackfeet will never be 
forgotten. Crowfoot's words shall be sent to the Queen. All 
Mr. Dewdney's promises shall be faithfully carried out." 

From the time of Father Laeombe's hurried first 
visit to the Crossing until the Rebellion ended he 
spent his time mostlj"^ out on the plains seeking to 
keep the Indians pacified. 

A rumour came to him that Ermine-Skin's Indians 
were rising in the north. It was even reported that 
the INIetis at St. Albert district were threatening — 
but this Father Lacombe did not take seriously. He 
knew too well Bishop Grandin's influence over them. 

He departed for the north, when he had no longer 
any fear for the south. He believed Crowfoot would 
keep his pact of peace and, keeping it, would strongly 
influence the allied tribes. Moreover Fathers Legal 
and Doucet, as also Captain Denny the Indian 
agent, were industriously at work on the reserves 
keeping the tribes quiet. 

This was absolutely necessary; as the records of the 
Blood Reserve mission note: 

"These Indians had a very efficient despatch service and 
they were fully informed upon all that passed. They re- 
mained loyal and at peace, but it was easy to recognize signs 
of uneasiness in them ; and if the Metis and their savage allies 
in the north had been able to maintain the campaign longer, 
it is difficult to say what might have resulted." 



304. FATHER LACOMBE 1885 

A letter in April from Father ScoUen at Bear 
Hill reserve greatly disturbed Father Lacombe. 
He related that a courier riding from Edmonton 
passed through the reserve at a steeple-chase rate, 
warning all the whites as he went. The half-dozen 
white people there fled to Edmonton. Father Scol- 
len and his lay-brother remained alone with the In- 
dians who were now hugely excited. 

They beUeved that Riel was about to pass through 
the country with an army, sweeping all before him. 
The days of the whites were numbered, they said, and 
the buffalo would return. A band of painted war- 
riors looted the store in the village. The older, 
staider men supported Father Scollen in his protest 
against any brave joining Riel, and with one of the 
chiefs he succeeded in breaking up a war-dance of 
the young men. 

This letter caused Father Lacombe to reahze 
afresh the imminent dangers and the slight weights 
on which everywhere the balance might turn. He at 
once departed for the north with an old Metis to 
pacify any restless Crees he could meet, and to visit 
the bishop. 

He arrived at St. Albert at noon. The bishop 
was pacing slowly tJirough the grounds before his 
log-palace lost in thought. . . . When his 
glance fell upon the unexpected visitor the sur- 
prise so affected him that he tottered to a nearby 
seat. 

His unhinged nerves cried out that Father La- 



1885 FATHER LACOMBE 305 

combe's arrival meant some fresh trouble had befallen 
their Indian charges or their own men. The massa- 
cre of the two young priests at Frog Lake — the 
knowledge that others were even then imprisoned — 
and the gi-ief he felt over the whole uprising had com- 
pletely worn him out. 

He was so pitifully broken with this fresh emotion 
and so nervous that at first Father Lacombe would 
not let him talk, but soothed him with assurances of 
the peaceful condition of the south. Always strong 
and ojjtimistic, without an enfeebled nerve in his en- 
tire makeup, Father Lacombe was a tower of 
strength to the bishop then. 

This period assuredly was a Golgotha to the sensi- 
tive prelate, mourning his own helplessness to stem 
the insurrection. He could not leave St. Albert, for 
the Government had requested him to remain there 
to ensure the peaceful attitude of the large colonies 
of JMetis in that district. ]Many persons from Ed- 
monton and the surrounding country had taken 
refuge near him. So this physically-broken man, 
who dominated the position in one portion of the 
west, had to chafe at home in inactivity. 

On his return journey Father Lacombe met many 
Crees at Bear Hill Reserve, among them his friend 
Chief Ermine-Skin. The latter was not content to 
speak his loyal intentions to the missionary. He de- 
sired to communicate them to General Strange, the 
commander of the Canadian soldien,' encamped 
nearby. 



306 FATHER LACOMBE 1885 

Father Lacombe brought him to the camp. It was 
dusk when they approached the lines, and they were 
challenged by the sentry. 

Father Lacombe did not know the pass-word. To 
the challenge — "Qui-va-la?" he answered only: 

"Pere Lacombe." 

The name proved a Sesame here, as in the camps 
of the Crees and Blackfeet! 

The soldier immediately stepped aside to let him 
pass. 

Lacombe was one of the watchwords of this camp, 
whose occupants — the 65th Regiment from Montreal 
— were familiar with Father Lacombe's services to 
the west. 

Meanwhile the fate of the rebels was being worked 
out on the plains of the Saskatchewan. When Rial 
and Poundmaker surrendered in May the insurrec- 
tion was virtually over. 

A letter written by Father Legal to his Superior 
after a summer spent with the Indians reflects con- 
ditions in outlying camps: 



"Macleod, August, 1885, 
"Dear Father Lacombe: 

"I received yesterday at Macleod a few lines which you 
wrote to me on the envelope of a letter from France. C'est 
bien; I will remain here awaiting your orders. 

"I have passed the last two weeks with the Blood nation. 
I camped in a tent in their midst. The villages are aban- 
doned. . . . The Indians are quiet, but they are far 
from being persuaded of the defeat of the Crees and Metis. 



4 



1885 FATHER LACOMBE 307 

All sorts of rumours, more or less resembling the truth, are 
being circulated among the two camps. 

"For instance lately an Indian who came from Blackfoot 
Crossing related that the Police and Blackfeet were on the 
point of attacking each other at Calgary — and that the shed- 
ding of blood had only been prevented by your intervention 
that seven cannons had arrived — three for Calgary 
and four for Macleod . . . and that Crowfoot was very 
exasperated ^ against the Whites . . . that he threat- 
ened to assemble a multitude of Indians whom he would bring 
from across the Mountains. What is there of truth in all 
this.? 

"I have told them that your letter, which I had just re- 
ceived, told me nothing of the kind. The Indian pretends to 
have his information from Crowfoot himself — 'Who,' he said, 
'knows whereof he speaks and is not a child.' It is in this way 
they excite one another." 

I The talk of Crowfoot's exasperation may have arisen from some 
hasty expression of this Chief — thouch he was in act loyal through- 
out the Rebellion. It is related in Father Doucet's manuscript Notes 
of the Blackfoot Missions that Crowfoot was greatly annoyed when 
Poundmaker (his adopted son) was imprisoned after his surrender — 
and it was reported that this likable Chief would be put to death. 

It is possible that Crowfoot was then provoked to hasty remarks 
of a threatening nature. 



IX 

The services of Father Lacombe in the interest 
of public welfare during the Rebellion were gener- 
ously acknowledged in public and private by various 
Canadian statesmen, by congratulatory letters and 
otherwise/ 

The Government now secured Father Lacombe as 
census-enumerator for the first census of the Black- 
feet and their allies. The resultant statistics indi- 
cate clearly a transition stage: as on the Blood Re- 
serve the population of 2,251 possessed 1,500 horses, 
lived in tepees most of the year but had already built 
220 permanent dwellings on their reserves. 

In his activities here, however, Father Lacombe 
did not lose sight of the misguided Crees and Metis 
who were now chafing in imprisonment for partici- 
pation in the Rebellion. The opening months of 
1886 found him at Ottawa urgently pleading for the 
release of Chief Poundmaker and others. 

He was most favourably heard by the Prime Min- 
ister and his new colleague. Sir John Thompson, the 
young Catholic judge upon whom Sir John — pre- 

1 It was with Father Lacombe and his confreres in mind that Sir 
John Macdonald said in a public address in England in 1886: ". . . 
The finest moral police in the world is to be found in the priesthood of 
French Canada." 

308 



1886 FATHER LACOMBE 309 

eminently of a subtle wit — had bestowed a portfolio 
and with it the responsibility of explaining Kiel's ex- 
ecution to Catholic Quebec. 

Father Lacombe was joined in his representations 
at Ottawa by Archbishop Tache. They were en- 
tirely successful, and on JNIarch 4th Father Lacombe 
could return to Winnipeg. Without waiting for 
food or rest he hastened out to the Penitentiary to 
bring the good news to Poundmaker and his men. 

"All, the scene in that Penitentiary when I went 
with Governor Bedson to tell our Indians they were 
free to go home to the plains again," Father La- 
combe recalls. "They were so happy — like little chil- 
dren. Bedson, my good friend, made them a ban- 
quet and gave them presents. To Poundmaker he 
gave a watch — and we drove away in carriages to the 
Archbishop's Palace. 

"We stayed there overnight. Then we went by 
train to Qu'Appelle, the Government paying all the 
expenses of the jou^neJ^ The passengers were verj^ 
curious about us and asked many questions. But 
my Indians thought of nothing except that they were 
going home. At Qu'Appelle I gave them over to our 
Fathers there, and thej^ took them north into their 
own country. 

"I was sorry I could not take a pardon to all of 
the prisoners that day; but I could promise it to the 
others soon. Before the year they were free. Big 
Bear was one of the last to leave — one year after 
Poundmaker w^ent home." 



310 FATHER LACOMBE 1886 

During his visit to Ottawa this winter Sir John 
Macdonald invited him to return with Crowfoot and 
others of the allied chiefs who had remained loyal to 
the Government. He desired to show his apprecia- 
tion of their conduct. Likewise it was felt that the 
chiefs' visit might serve as an object-lesson of the 
white man's power. 

Crowfoot and his brethren — Three Bulls and Red 
Crow — ^were now made ready as befitted chiefs of 
their rank, and their people assembled en masse to 
watch them ride away on gaily-caparisoned ponies 
to the Crossing. Here they committed themselves 
to the demonhke horse which was to carry them a 
long journey many days from their own people. 

They did not take this step without hesitation. 
They were reassured only by the fact that the Man- 
of-the-Good- Heart was to be their guide; for though 
Crowfoot would not accept his Christian teachings 
he loved and trusted the man himself. 

The party was provided with transportation over 
the Canadian Pacific, to Ottawa, Montreal and Que- 
bec, and their passage was something of a royal 
progress. People everywhere crowded to see them. 
Hotels vied to secure them as guests and different the- 
atres were anxious to have them occupy boxes. 

At Ottawa they were received by Sir John in the 
Parliament Buildings — ^then entertained at his res- 
idence. The Governor-General was waited upon at 
Rideau Hall, the Archbishop at his Palace; and 
everywhere the little bronzed missionary and his 



! 



1886 FATHER LACOMBE 311 

silent warriors were welcomed with impressive friend- 
liness. 

At a public reception given by the city of Ottawa, 
Crowfoot's fine manner and physique astonished the 
assembled multitude. His address, which was de- 
livered with superb gestures was translated into 
Enghsh by Jean L'Heureux, whose senices Father 
Lacombe had thoughtfully rewarded by including in 
the party. 

At the close of his speech Crowfoot placed his 
hand affectionately upon Father Lacombe's shoul- 
der, and looking down at him, said: 

"This man, Arsous-kitsi-rarpi, is our brother — ■ 
not only our Father, as the white people call him — 
but our brother. He is one of our people. When 
we weep he is sad with us; when we laugh he laughs 
with us. We love him. He is our brother!" 

It was a simple summing-up of a whole-hearted 
devotion. 

At the hotels these veteran warriors would not oc- 
cupy the fine suites of rooms reserved for them: they 
felt safer in one apartment. They were uneasy when 
Father Lacombe was out of their sight and insisted 
he sliould sleep in the same room as they did. 

One day when Sir John jMacdonald telegraphed 
Father Lacombe to come from INIontreal to Ottawa 
on business, the Blackfeet were genuinely distressed. 

"Do not go. We will be alone," they protested. 
"And what will we do. alone in this big country?" 

He persuaded them to let him go to Ottawa in the 



312 FATHER LACOMBE 1887 

morning and he would return before night. Mean- 
while they had him order their meals served in their 
own room, and they did not leave it nor would they 
close their eyes in sleep until he returned. 

To a Roller Rink the party went one day, the 
chiefs exclaiming witli laughter at the whirling 
whites as a Canadian might find amusement in a 
whirhng dervisli. They went another day to the 
Royal Theatre, hut soon tired of the bright lights and 
scenes that were merely new phases of the drama of 
civihzation unfolding itself daily to them. 

At Quebec the visitors were guests of the Officers' 
Mess at the Citadel; they were guests at a sham bat- 
tle at Levis, and Crowfoot with the military com- 
mander reviewed a regimental parade on the Champ 
de Mars. The Government judiciously desired that 
Crowfoot should return home with a vivid reahzation 
of the fighting power of the white race. 

Perhaps the most demonstrative reception of their 
tour was accorded them at a bazaar held in Mon- 
treal. Clad in skin garments, feathers and brass 
ornaments the warriors and their cicerone were the 
chief attraction of the festivity. Here as elsewhere 
the stately Crowfoot was the Lion. A group of 
Iriquois chieftains from Caughnawaga only served as 
foils to show up the primitive grandeur of Father 
Lacombe's proteges. 

On the final night of the bazaar Crowfoot was led 
to the stage and there presented with a stack of rifles 
and ammunition. He astounded his hearers by 



4 



188T FATHER LACOMBE 313 

rejecting them with a magnificent gesture, as he 
said: 

"I do not want these guns you would give me. I 
did not come here to make war — nor to defend my- 
self; because I am with friends here. I have not 
even a small knife to defend myself. . . . Keep 
the guns; we have many guns in our countrj^!" 

Translated into French by Fatlier Lacombe the 
chief's pronomicement was greeted with wild Bravos! 
and cheers. His apparent hurt at the gift, the sin- 
cerity of his avowal of friendship struck to the hearts 
of the impressionable audience. . . . To their 
aroused sympathies his words thrilled with the rude 
chivalry of the plains: they were seized with the 
strength of liis personality. . . . Vivat Crow- 
foot! 

Flowers and shawls and handsome gifts were then 
suddenly showered on the stage at his feet bj^ the 
wildly enthusiastic people. These, they assured him, 
were the tokens of friendship he was to bring back 
to the allied tribes from the French-Canadians of 
^Montreal, and Crowfoot accepted the new gifts with 
cordiality. 

On their retm-n home the lodges of the Blackfeet 
echoed for months the tales of the wonders of the 
east and the cities of the white men: for the Indian's 
face may be impassive, but his eye reaps its harvest 
and his memory is long. 

The closing months of this year and several in 1887 
were spent by Father Lacombe in supervising the 



814 FATHER LACOMBE 1887 

mission-work of his southern district, with several 
visits to Edmonton to secure Cree children for the 
Dunbow School. There was one pleasant interval 
of relaxation, when he led an excursion by rail to the 
Pacific. 

This was a tour especially planned by him 
for the benefit of Archbishop Fabre and Arch- 
bishop Tache, but he also invited Father Maisonneuve 
now old and frail and deaf, resting at St. Boniface 
after years of hardship along the Saskatchewan. 

Here and there at the points tended by isolated 
missionaries an Oblate brother, shabbily clad, brown 
with exposure but light of heart, boarded their car — 
to be swept into a whirl of fraternal greetings, to 
marvel at the grandeur of their equipage, then to 
drop back into the routine of everyday work as the 
train sped on. 

At the Columbia in the Rockies where that river 
winds north about a mass of mountains. Father La- 
combe recalled his prophecy to the promoters of the 
Canadian Pacific that they would be unable to make 
a desirable passage through the Kicking Horse Pass. 
He saw now that while the Columbia River falls 
back before the Selkirks the engineers of the Cana- 
dian Pacific, more daring than Nature, had thrown 
their iron road triumphantly over the obstacle. 

At Vancouver, then the crude yoimg terminal of 
the C. P. R. — the visitors were given a civic recep- 
tion. Toward evening they were conducted to the 
harbour, Avhere a beautiful spectacle awaited them. 



1887 FATHER LACOMBE 315 

An Indian village across the bay was fantastically 
illuminated with Chinese lanterns and on the harbour 
a flotilla of Indian canoes spread out. Chinese lan- 
terns attached to the slender rigging gemmed the 
floating parade which formed and re-formed in be- 
wildering manoeuvres about the boat of the Bishop's 
partJ^ 

As the dainty craft darted here and there across the 
water there rose from hundreds of breasts the wild 
melody of Indian hjTnns. Three great cannons 
added their voices to the tumult of joyous welcome 
as the procession moved across the Bay, until at last 
the visitors stepped ashore at the Indian village and 
in the square before the church were formally wel- 
comed by the chief of the tribe. 

On the following day Archbishop Fabre blessed 
the first Catholic Church to be opened in Vancouver, 
were decades earlier French voyageurs of the Com- 
pany and Indians had worshipped at woodland 
shrines erected by Father Demers and Father Blan- 
chet. 

On the afternoon of the same day the party went 
by steamboat to Victoria. They found the city in 
mourning, the Palace and Cathedral draped in black 
— news having just come in from the north that 
Archbishop Seghers, the head of the diocese, had been 
murdered in November of the previous year by his 
servant whilst travelling on mission work in the Yu- 
kon District. 

On their homeward way, as the train passed Cal- 



316 FATHER LACOMBE 1888 

gary again, the party regretfully took leave of their 
"dear Indian," Father Lacombe, who picked up the 
threads of his work refreshed by the hohday. 

Toward the close of this year Father Lacombe was 
again compelled to take to the road. Like a soldier 
he travelled with light knapsacks and never required 
long marching-orders. 

On this occasion he was asked by his bishop to ac- 
company him on a tour of the Eastern States, where 
in the French-Canadian parishes and elsewhere they 
might beg ahns for their missions. Even to Father 
Lacombe's "holy audacity," as his ecclesiastical 
friends in Quebec termed it, this mission was not a 
pleasant one: to Bishop Grandin's exquisitely sensi- 
tive spirit it was one long trial and humiliation. 

In several parishes they were welcomed, in others 
tolerated; in some the permission to preach and beg 
was refused. For people — even when they gave 
alms — occasionally grumbled at the incessant calls of 
missionaries, and their pastors felt alike their own 
parochial responsibilities and the disinchnation of 
their people. 

Father Lacombe's letters written during this win- 
ter's trip show plainly his difficulties — among them 
the disheartening fact that his oft-repeated story in 
broken Enghsh has grown thread-bare and uninter- 
esting to himself — though the privations of his fellow- 
missionaries back in the western shacks do not lessen. 

Writing in French from Philadelphia on March 22, 
1888, to his friend Father Legal, he says he has 



J 



1888 FATHER LACOMBE 317 

just returned from the diocese of Baltimore with 

". . . But what -work. Mon tres cher! I am al- 
(vays at the plough with letters, newspaper announcements, 
trips, and then — those sermons ! 

"Imagine me in the pulpit of one of these grand churches 
or cathedrals before an audience of priests or seminarists — 
and then saying to that multitude : 'My dear brethren, I am 
only a poor Indian missionary. The poor must have the 
gospel preached to them, therefore mj bishop and myself, we 
jome to make an appeal to your liberality,' and so on. I as- 
sure you, my body creaks, as I used to say out there. I would 
3e discouraged and fail to know how to continue my address 
— if my imagination did not picture to me, you, my brother- 
missionary at your work. I take heart again and you seem to 
say: 'Go on ; we are praying for you.' " 

At the foot of this letter there is a little note for 
ill the priests in the dehcate handwriting of Bishop 
Grandin : 

"I am truly desolate because of the illness of our dear Fa- 
ther Van Tighen. We have already experienced so many 
trials of all sorts that God might at least grant health to us 
ill. Take courage however, my dear Father. If you suiFer : 
if you have difficulties, remember that for my part I have 
<nown them too — and great ones. If it were not that our 
:ause is God's also I would despair of it. 

"I embrace you, and bless you all, 

"Your affectionate brother, 

"Vital, O. M. I." 

This characteristic note illustrates one source of the 

nspiration of tlie wonderful work done by the Oblate 



1 



318 FATHER LACOMBE 1888 

missionaries in the west — the exhortations and sym- 
pathy of their chiefs who appreciated just how heavy 
their burdens were, because they had first borne them 
all themselves. 

Woonsocket, Pawtucket, and Providence are can- 
vassed successfully, but Father Lacombe is beginning 
to feel the infirmities of age. He complains of the 
heat and of weakness in his limbs. . . . "These 
are terrible journeys for my strength, physical and 
mental." 

One pleasant feature of the old missionary's tour 
was his meeting with Mother Katherine Drexel, of the 
Philadelphia Drexels, who had consecrated her hfe 
and fortune to the uphft of the Indian and negro.. 
When they parted Father Lacombe was richer by sev- 
eral hundred dollars given by the nun to be devoted 
to hospital work among the Indians. 

It was also while at Providence, R. I., this year that 
he was shown a beautiful private home and estate 
which had been donated by its owner as a Home for 
aged and orphans. As he looked, a vision sprang 
up before Father Lacombe, and remained with him 
for years till he saw its realization in the Lacombe 
Home. 



When Father Lacombe at last returned with 
$6,000 to the western missions he found plenty of 
cares awaiting him. Affairs at the Bow were bien 
tristes for lack of money, he chronicled. But he had 
the happiness of playing his old role of Lord Bounti- 
ful. 

He had no jurisdiction over the money collected. 
He had, however, many presents for his friends — a 
bell bought in Philadelphia for the mission at Banff — 
an ostentorium for Father Van Tighen — a Way of 
the Cross for Father Blais — a magic lantern with 
New Testament pictures for Father Leduc and his 
Indians; while for Father Legal his beggar friend 
had secured a new saddle, a washing machine, four 
volumes of the History of the Church, and an alarm 
clock! — which luxuries are forwarded to the young 
priest amid mutual expressions of delight. 

Dividing his time and efforts this winter between 
white and Indian missions in the south, Father La- 
combe finds but one abiding source of humour in the 
little brick Chateau and embrj'o orchard evolved from 
next to nothing at Lethbridge by his ingenious 
brother, Father Van Tighen. The orchard, which 
first demonstrated the possibilities of horticulture in 
Southern Alberta, and the Chateau were in time to 
319 



S20 FATHER LACOMBE 1889 

win a place in Southern Alberta records: this year 
they only afforded material for Father Lacombe to 
tease "that dear Father Van Tighen." 

A visit to Edmonton in April, 1889, found him so 
worn-out that he collapsed physically and was or- 
dered to bed for weeks, where he lay planning new 
movements in the interests of the southern tribes and 
writing long letters to his bishop begging him not to 
abandon this unsatisfactory field, as pressing needs 
elsewhere urged the bishop to do. 

From Edmonton he went with Bishop Gran din to 
St, Boniface to attend the first Provincial Council 
of western Cathohc clergy. This met in Winnipeg 
on July, 1889, and included a celebration of the sev- 
enty-first anniversary of the arrival of Bishop Pro- 
vencher and Father Dumonlin. Where in 1818 there 
had been only two priests there were now one Arch- 
bishop, five Bishops, and one hundred and twenty-six 
priests together with numerous consecrated workers. 

The Lieutenant-Governors of JNIanitoba and of the 
Northwest attended the first public session of the 
Council. Father Lacombe was named promoter of 
the convention, and it continued from July 14th to 
July 24th, with sessions public and private and sol- 
emn religious services. 

That autumn, as Superintendent of the district his 
confreres assembled about him in Macleod for their 
annual retreat. He writes that they not only have 
a lay-brother to cook for them this year and attend 
to their wants, but this factotum is Brother Jean, a 



1889 FATHER LACOMBE 321 

most capable man. The veteran chronicles with de- 
light that at last they are going to make a retreat 
en messicius — like gentlemen. 

On October 12 Lord Stanley the Governor Gen- 
eral visited !Macleod and the carriage of Capt. Mc- 
Donnell, N. W. M. P. was sent on His Excellency's 
request to bring Father Lacombe to meet liim. 
The missionary writes Father Legal that they con- 
versed for an hour in French, Father Lacombe 
speaking to His Excellency verj-^ frankly about school 
matters and the inadequacy of certain Indian officials. 

Apart from this the picture his letter contains of a 
western reception to Vice-royalty in the eighties is 
not captivating: 

"Yesterday- the Governor arrived. I was there with a few 
others. Little enthusiasm — the good people of Maclcod were 
occupied with drinking. What a race of people ! what rude- 
ness! . . . But our mission-bell rang out, beside the pa- 
vilion. 

"Last night at nine — was His Excellency's levee in the City 
Hall. Fiasco and failure ! We were about a score of people, 
two priests and Reverend Mr. Hilton. . . . What a 
triste affair. But there were four ladies deshahilees — among 
them Mrs. , who as we passed out with tlie Governor com- 
menced to leap about like a danseuse. His Excellency will 
have a grand idea of the people of iMacleod." 

In Christmas week Father Lacombe received a let- 
ter wliich was a fresh evidence of the regard of a man 
whose friendship has been marked by a series of grace- 



322 FATHER LACOMBE 1889 

ful acts. The letter enclosed a railway pass over the 
whole system of the Canadian Pacific. 

"MoNTKEAL, December 22, 1889'. \ 
"Dear Father Lacombe: 

"We are still following you wherever we go, with our rails 
and locomotives, and it is possible that you will hear our 
whistle at Macleod before the end of the coming year. 

"I send you herewith a little charm against railway con- 
ductors, which you may find useful since you cannot get 
beyond their reach. 

"With best wishes for your good health and long life, 
"Believe me, 

"Faithfully yours, 

"W. C. Van Hoene." 

Twenty years after this Pass had been received 
Father Lacombe stiU fingered affectionately the letter 
that accompanied it, while he said with tender gravity 
that trembled with tears at the end: 

"He wrote it himself. . . . You see, why I 
love that man different from the others — lie is him- 
self different. He has not only his genius, his brain, 
but he has a heart; that is more rare. See, he wrote 
this letter himself; that man — and so busy. But it 
was always so — ^he has been beautiful in the little 
things of Life. . . . Ah, Omimi, I love that man 
— ^he is the brother of my heart." 

The old priest's heart was both responsive and ac- 
tively affectionate, yet he could be stern, too, when 
the occasion arose, and one record of it shows not 



J 



90 FATHER LACOMBE 323 

)ne his sternness but his unsurpassed perception of 
2 Indian character and how to influence it for the 
st. This concerns five Indian Metis, three women 
d two men, who in contact with low whites had sunk 

low as mankind can sink toward the animal state, 
d who had flouted the old priest's appeals to lead 
)re decent lives. 

On JNIarch 16 he concluded a mission at Calgary 
r all the Indians and Metis of the neighbourhood, 
e writes to Father Legal about the grand closing 
monstration — the chanting of the Te Deum, the 
!emn baptizing of nine adult Crees who had been 
gans, and the marriage of three couples. "It was 

touching," he says; then adds: 

"On the eve of the closing I believed it my duty to make a 
il striking coup d'eclat. I covered the altar with the 
leral pall and to the sound of funeral knells tolling I de- 
jnced and excommunicated five public sinners — three 
men, two men — after which we recited the Miserere, greatly 
pressing and astounding the whole assembly." 

It is doubtful if the indecent degraded lives of the 
e were in any way altered by these thunders of the 
lurch, but the ceremonies certainly exercised a most 
lolesome influence on some of their brethren who 
re tempted to join them on the soiled primrose path 
frontier Calgary's underworld. 
In April of this year, 1890, Crowfoot lay down his 
:ptre of native power, named his brother Three 



324 FATHER LACOMBE 1890 

Bulls his successor, and met death with brave serenity 
befitting an Ancient. 

His funeral was a striking compromise between the 
ways of the pagan and the Christian, for though 
Crowfoot had Hved an avowed pagan he had died a 
professing Cliristian, and two days before his death 
he asked Father Doucet to baptize him and receive 
him into the fold of the Church. 

Shortly before his death his people shot his favour- 
ite pony before the tepee in accordance with pagan 
rites, but at the last Father Doucet chanted the pray- 
ers for the dead by the open grave. 

With Crowfoot the last of the great Indians of the 
plains passed into history. 

In June as a deserved holiday Father Lacombe 
took Father Legal and Father Doucet to visit Sechelt, 
an Indian village north of Vancouver. The visit was 
made during the annual religious Congress of the 
Pacific Indians, where the tribes of Sechelt, Squam- 
ish, Sycannis, Lilloet, Chilcotin, Stickeen, Cariboo, 
Douglas, Stuart's Lake, and Fraser River met to- 
gether accompanied by their missionaries. 

Many of the Indians who had come out from the 
interior now looked upon ^eamboats and railways for 
the first time. Others of a newer generation came 
from Indian schools and brought brass bands with 
them. 

The ninth or closing day of the Congress fell as 
planned on Corpus Christi and was marked by a pro- 
cession. Its start was prefaced by the booming of 



I 



890 FATHER LACOMBE S25 

annons and it was accompanied along a flower-strewn 
ray by alternate music of bands and chanting of 
ndian choirs. The procession came to a close 
i^ith a Calvary-tableau on the hill overlooking the 
illage. 

At night a torchlight procession moved through the 
illage streets like the current of a river in flames; 
nd the intermingling of music and chanting of 
•rayers in the quiet evening beside the Pacific was 
eyond words beautiful. 

The missionaries of the plains returned home over 
he mountains with a fresh impulse to work for their 
3SS promising Blackfeet. Father Lacombe immedi- 
tely directed his activities toward promoting French- 
llanadian colonies in the Saskatchewan vallej'. 

Up and do\^Ti the old province of Quebec, across 
he border into the Eastern States the stalwart vet- 
ran travelled preacliing his doctrine of the new land, 
ree farms and openings for young men. "On the 
oad all the time," he reports early in September to 
lis friend among the Bloods. "Yesterday I came up 
rom below Quebec stopping only at the bishop's. I 
hall soon go again to Rimouski — Ca c'est un com- 
nerce!" 

A week later he and Bishop Grandin are at Ottawa 
)ressing their claims concerning Indian schools, 
imong the requests he urges upon the ^Minister of the 
Interior is the establisliment of a hospital for In- 
lians on the Blood Reserve. It is not a new request : 
le is merely renewing his petitions, as men sooner or 



326 FATHER LACOMBE 1890 

later learned this amiable, iron-willed old man would 
do — mitil he obtained what he sought. 

"Vous savez que je suis un homme a plans!" . . , 
A man of plans, indeed ; he might have said, a man of 
accomplisliments. 

In October he wrote a brief rapturous note an- 
nouncing to Father Legal that at last he has been able 
though the charity of friends to buy two small organs 
which he says stand as an evidence of his own au- 
dacity. "Of course, there is one for Your Reverence, 
and one for Father Foisy ; mais, mon tres clier, how I 
have wanted for a long time to get one of these organs 
for you!" 

On each of his trips to Montreal in the eighties 
Father Lacombe used to renew his pleasant friend- 
ship with Sir WilHam Van Home, Sir George Ste- 
phen and Sir Donald Smith, and dining one day at 
the home of the last-named, with other magnates of 
the C. P. R., he first met "Lord and Lady Aberdeen 
arriving from Scotland." 

This I note, because it marked the beginning of 
another very pleasant acquaintance which was to 
ripen into a warm friendship. For the Scotch peer 
and his wife were immediately taken with a person- 
ahty that combined intellectual and human interest 
in the most picturesque fashion; while with Father 
Lacombe their ready kindness and outspoken regard 
won his responsive liking as readily as the sun drew 
up dew from the heart of his own prairie-roses. 

These visits to old friends in the east formed some 



1890 FATHER LACOMBE 327 

of the many bright hours of liis work-a-day trips, but 
on the whole he was wearied — "overwhelmed with 
Decupations," he says — and he confides to Father Le- 
gal his growing hope that on his return the bishop 
will let him build a house in the quiet foothills at 
Pincher Creek, to retire there as to a hermitage. 

Plis memory and notebooks were as usual crowded 
with commissions for his fellow-priests and other 
friends — calls to be made on relatives; favours to be 
secured; lonely [Metis children in Eastern schools to 
be called upon; pathetic petitions for necessilries in the 
shabby missions. And like a big brother who goes 
3ut into the world he was only happy when he could 
return laden with gifts and affectionate messages for 
bis brethren. . . . It is noteworthy that he never 
kept an}'ihing of all the gifts for himself! 

On his return to the west he spent some time vis- 
iting the reserves'r Writing to his bishop in Decem- 
ber he ascribes the Blackfeet's tenacious paganism to 
their pride : 

"Of an inveterate — I could saj'' — an innate pride, 
they have no conception of the virtue of humility, nor 
iny words in their tongue to express it. The Black- 
foot will never say he is a sinner nor humble himself. 
On the contrary, from the chief and warriors — proud 
md superb in manner — down to the child beginning 
to shape a bow, the contiauous refrain upon their per- 
sonal goodness is the same. . . . But God with- 
draws Himself from the proud of heart and draws 
lear the humble. . . ." 



828 FATHER LACOMBE 1891 

A further reason for their stand against Christi- 
anity, he finds, is their determined practice of polyg- 
amy. Even at this period the warriors maintained 
the right to their old-time prairie harems, and a girl's 
parents would sell her at the age of ten years to a 
grown man selecting her as a future wife. Crowfoot 
was an exception to the Blackfoot rule of polygamy: 
like the Head-Chief Sweet-Grass and unKke his lesser 
followers he was satisfied with one wife. And these 
two chiefs were noted for wisdom in their tribes. 

For the past seven years Father Lacombe's letters 
have reflected his anxieties about various Indian school 
boys. Now in February of 1891 he has the most i 
serious case of all to speak about — a young brave, 
Peter, who was accused of helping to steal horses at ' 
Medicine Hat. The boy cried so pitifully before he 
was taken off to gaol that Father Lacombe decided I 
"I must go and do my possible with Judge Macleod" 
— and with everyone else in authority to secure clem- 
ency for the poor boy. . . . 

For how was Peter to quite grasp the doctrine that I 
what was glory in the days of the youth of Crowfoot 
and Sweet-Grass was crime in his? 

Father Lacombe set out on his mission of mercy 
with such pleasure in the act of benevolence that the 
onlooker is set to wonder which is dearer to Father i 
Lacombe — ^the wrong-doer who throws himself upon i 
his mercy, or the charitable friend who opens sj^m- - 
pathies and purse to meet the needs of his beloved I 
missions? Either class has a strong hold upon his 



1891 FATHER LACOMBE 329 

aflFections — but the balance of favour lies perhaps with 
the friendless sinner— no matter what his crime. 

And for this reason the man of despau', divining 
the old priest's sympathy, always made a sanctuary 
of him. 

In April Father Lacombe together with Father 
Legal drove from the Blood reserve into Montana to 
visit the southern Piegans near Two Medicine River. 
They ministered to these aUies of the Blackfeet, vis- 
ited the Agency and dined at the cafe of Joe Kipp 
of border-fame. On the return trip, losing the trail 
in a storm, thej^ found shelter at night in the home of 
one of the numerous Mormon settlers then coming 
in to Southern Alberta. 

In November, when he was again planning his 
retirement to the Hermitage, Father Lacombe went 
instead to Montreal on the bishop's request to repre- 
sent St. Albert diocese at the fiftieth anniversary of 
the Oblates' arrival in Canada. 

Father Lacombe's stay in the east, although a 
busy one, was not without social pleasure. Among 
clergy and laity his unusual personality and powers 
as a raconteur exercised their charm, and his com- 
pany was still sought after by leading men in JNIon- 
treal and Ottawa, who had seen the rich nature 
behind the humble exterior of the old plainsman. 

ilt Ottawa he dined ^\'ith Sir Adolphe Caron, with 
Sir John Thompson, and others of his friends among 
the "gros bonnets." ^ At Montreal he was enter- 

1 Big Hats — an Indian term for Chiefs. 



330 FATHER LACOMBE 189« 

tained by Sir William Van Home, James Ross, and 
others prominent in Canadian finance and public life. 
He was always sensitive to genuine social charm 
and of one evening and host he writes this charming 
tribute : 

"Last Saturday I dined with my good friend Van Home in 
company with several 'gros bonnets' The evening was a 
•veritable triumph of refinement and amiability." 

Whilst in Montreal he was presented with a very 
fine Italian painting ^ by the directors of the Cana- 
dian Pacific Railway. In the pleasing presentation 
which took place in the President's office. Father La- 
combe recognized again the charming thought and 
temperament of his old friend. 

On January 3rd, 1892, he writes from Montreal 
to Father Legal that he is "encmsibered with business 
and commissions. Ah, I have need of a frame of 
iron," is the note of complaint with which he concludes 
the letter. He is evidently tired and his years are 
telling on him. 

Some portion of his weariness may be due to the 
fact that he was greatly discouraged in his efforts to 
procure the hospital for southern Indians which had 
been practically promised to him a year earlier at 
Calgary by the Hon. Mr. Dewdney. 

The prospects at Ottawa now were not promising 
and Father Lacombe appealed again and again to 
the Hon. Mr. Dewdney and the Hon. Mayne Daly — 

1 This painting »tiU hangs over the high altar ef St. Mary's, Calgary. 



1892 FATHER LACOMBE 331 

the latter one of the few poHticians whom Father La- 
combe credited with a serious sense of responsibility 
toward the child-races of the plains, and a practical 
sympathy with their needs. 

He urged upon the two the truth that privations 
and lack of food had weakened the Indians and that 
new diseases were coming among them from the 
whites. He begged them to build a hospital on 
the Blood Reserve as an experiment. 

A letter Avritten by him on February 8th to Father 
Legal shows him utterly disheartened, for the Hon. 
Mr. Dewdney had brought him to Premier Abbott 
and he was told by the latter that the hospital would 
have to wait another year or two . . . there sim- 
ply were no funds for it. 

At the announcement Father Lacombe saw his air- 
castles on the Blood Reserve shattered at his feet; 
dazed with disappointment he looked from one to an- 
other of the "gros bonnets" . . . then broke out 
with the eloquence of his despair. 

The eloquence and disappointment combined so 
moved the poHticians that on March 9th Father La- 
combe could write jubilantly to his western corre- 
spondent: 

"Dear Father: 

"Thank God with me ! Yesterday I had an interview with 
Dewdne}', who was very amiable. His first words to me were : 
'Father, your Hospital is granted; I have got the money for 
you.' My heart beat hard: I was so surprised and so 
glad. . . ." 



332 FATHER LACOMBE 1892 

He then goes into details about the grant, urging 
Father Legal to hasten to make a plan for the build- 
ing: for the young Breton had added the architect's 
craft to his other accomplishments since he arrived in 
Alberta. . . . He continues: 

"Now, my dear Father and friend of many days, we must 
move heaven and earth to make a success of our famous en- 
terprise. 'If you are successful,' said Mr. Dewdney to me, 
'I assure you we will make similar establishments on other Re- 
serves.' It is also intended that the hospital shall be con- 
structed beside your house. I am weeping for joy of it; I 
am so happy. 'Quid retribuam Domino?' Quick, make me 
a nice plan." 

This was all for which he had waited; a few days 
later he set oflP for the west with twenty-six cases of 
baggage and supplies he had purchased or received 
as gifts for the missions of the diocese. 



XI 

The east being still unaware of the resources of 
western Canada, it was the policy of the C. P. R. to 
invite leading men to visit the west as their guests. 
The directors realized that every visitor seeing would 
believe and return an apostle of the New West. 

Consequently on May 16 a party of ecclesiastics 
left Montreal in two special cars, placed by the presi- 
dent at Father Lacombe's disposal. At St. Boniface 
Archbishop Tache joined the party, which then in- 
cluded the Archbishop of Ottawa, Father Lacombe, 
Bishop Lafleche who had been Tache's companion in 
the forties at Isle a la Crosse, Bishop Grouard of the 
Athabasca-Mackenzie district. Bishop JNIacdonald of 
Alexandria, Bishop Brondel of Helena, Montana, 
Bishop Lorrain of Pembroke, tlie Rector of Ottawa 
University, fourteen priests, Judge Routher of Que- 
bec and M. des Cases. 

At St. Boniface, Regina, Prince Albert, where 
Archbishop Tache blessed the corner-stone of a new 
Cathedral, and at Calgarj^ their reception was "a suc- 
cession of fetes." Calgary extended a civic reception 
and a public dinner to the visitors, the music being 
provided by an Indian band from the school where 
sight years earlier Father Lacombe had brought his 
group of young savages to be trained. 
838 



334 FATHER LACOMBE 189S 

From Calgary the route led to Edmonton, and St 
Albert, and thence to British Columbia where at St 
Mary's, the Canadian Oberammergau, they saw th« 
Passion Play religiously enacted by Indians. 

This was the most picturesque incident of their trip 
On their arrival they found seven tribes of Indians 
encamped in a beautiful plain beside the Fraser 
Greeted with a cannon's booming and the roar oi 
musketry from hundreds of Indians lined up to wel- 
come them, the entrance of the ecclesiastics in thf 
valley was one of semi-royal splendour. 

The Passion was protrayed in eight tableaux bj 
Indians garbed as Jews and Romans. Throughoul 
the tableaux the Indian multitude kept up a mournf u] 
chanting, but at the last scene a solemn hush fell or 
the valley . . . then one by one the chiefs of thf 
tribes rose and called out in a loud voice: 

"The Christ is dead — the Christ is dead!" 

That evening the seven tribes again assembled or 
the hill in an immense tent, where the Bishop of New 
Westminster officiated at a solemn benediction and 
the evening air was melodious with the chanting of 
hundreds of Indians; while on the plain beneath as 
darkness fell, the camp-fire before each ghostly white 
skin lodge made hvunan spots of warmth and colour 
in the moonlit valley, which was itself a divine etching 
in black and silver. 

By the middle of June the "Car of Israel," as the 
private coach had been named, returned to St. Boni- 



i 



893 \ FATHER LACOMBE 335 

'ace, and Father Lacombe's famous personally-con- 
lucted tour was at an end. 

In July our Hermit went to his hennitage, ex- 
jressing a firm intention to remain there. On Sep- 
ember 16th he writes : 

"To avoid being tempted to make voyages I have sent my 
lorses to Mr. Gravel. That is what they call 'burning one's 
hips' !" 

And so having banished Badger — the successor of 
lis good ponies, Buckskin and Buckshot — he felt him- 
elf bound to stay at home and rest, to compose 
lis mind and meditate on Eternity as he desired to 
lo in preparation for the end. 

The first interruption to his days of contemplation 
ame in December. He writes to Father Legal that 
Bishop Grandin had to go east on business and needs 
lim: and he feels he must go. He does not add — 
vhat was probablj- true — that the solitude of his her- 
nitage had begmi to pall upon him. 

In the east he began a search for volunteer-nurses 
or the Indian Hospital now nearing completion. 
ie found that the Superiors of convents were un- 
smiling to let their nuns go for hospital work among 
ndians with such a reputation for bloodtliirstiness 
.nd dislike for the tenets of Christianity. 

Telling the story of his efforts decades after he 
aid of the Superior-General of the Grey Nuns: 

"Perhaps that good jNIother could not spare her 
luns, or — as people said — she was afraid to send her 



336 FATHER LACOMBE 1898 

young Sisters among the wild Bloods ; for a Hospital 
you know, was not the same as a school for young 
cliildren. But anj^way, me — I was vexed, and I say 
— 'Tres bien, for fifty years we Oblates and you Grey 
Nuns have work side bj^ side in the west to see which 
can do the most good. Now you would stop here — 
Then Good-bye,' I said, and I went away not pleased 
— me! 

"At St. Hyacinthe, at Ottawa, at Quebec I went 
to the convents, and it was always the same : the Supe- 
riors refused. I was losing all my courage. 

"Then at Nicolet, where I went to see the Bishop 
on some other affairs, I told him of my disappoint- 
ment — it was at last becoming my despair. 

"Next day the Superior of that Nicolet Convent 
sent word to me that if any of her Sisters would vol- 
unteer themselves for the Hospital, she was willing to 
let them go. . . . Ah, that was joy for me — I 
cannot tell you how great. . . . Four Sisters 
came ; more would have come if I had need of more — 
ah, ces cheres Princesses!" 

"I have told these nuns I am going to ennoble them 
and call them Princesses of Charity," he wrote in his 
enthusiasm to Father Legal, and east and west the 
old man sang the praises of his dear Princesses, as the 
Nicolet nuns were for several j'ears known in church- 
circles of the west. 

While in the east he also secured from his friends 
at the Canadian Pacific offices a tri-weekly mail-serv- 
ice for Macleod instead of the weekly arrangement 



893 FATHER LACO.MBE 887 

lanned by the road, and he tells as a choice bit of 
ews to his friend that the C. P. R. will shortly build 
line up into the Crow's Xest Pass. 
He dines with his old friend, Edouard Fabre — now 
Lrchbishop of ^Montreal — on February 28, the anni- 
ersar}- of the birth of each; and he chronicles the 
elight they felt in recalling the good old days. But 
is mind is more heartily in touch with the needs of 
le present, and the same letter that notes the re- 
nion with Edouard Fabre announces happily that 
le Superiors of eight more colleges and four convents 
are each agreed to take a bright pupil from the west- 
m reserves and educate them free of charge. 

Before returning to the west Father Lacombe par- 
cipated in an interesting occasion, which was at the 
me recorded in The Empire of Toronto in the fol- 
»wing despatch of January' 22nd from Ottawa: 

'It was an historic scene which was enacted yesterday in 
le Privy Council Chamber here — historic because for the 
rst time in the history of the Dominion an appeal was be- 
ig heard by the Govemor-in-Council under the provisions 
'. Section 93 of the Confederation Act. Following the pre- 
ident set by the sub-committee of the Privy Council which 
;ard the preliminary argument, the proceedings yesterday 
ere open to the public. Every leading newspaper in the 
ominion had its representative present, while about a dozen 
jntlemen represented the great Canadian public. Among 
le more notable outsiders present were Rev. Father Lacombe, 
le famous X. W. missionary. . . ." 



388 FATHER LACOMBE 1898 

This morsel of parliamentary correspondence is in- 
dicative of the new phase of public life that had opened 
before Father Lacombe. The Canadian Governmeni 
was confronting a grave constitutional question whicl] 
for years was to engage the keenest wits of Canada's 
publicists, and through the long-drawn-out battle i\ 
entailed the two commanding figures always were the 
statesman-prelate of St. Boniface and his indomitable 
lieutenant, our old veteran of the plains. 

The question had been precipitated into the polit- 
ical arena by the ambitions of certain pohticians in 
Manitoba, assisted by Dalton McCarthy who was stU] 
burning with resentment at the passage of the Jesuit 
Estates' Bill and the failure of Sir John Macdonald 
to appoint him Minister of Justice. The case was 
kept open no less by the working of political intrigue 
than by the resolute convictions and principles 
roused in the opposing masses. Canada divided on 
the question ; political reputations were made and un- 
made in the "grand littte" as Father Lacombe was 
wont to term it; one government was thrown out of 
power and another elevated by reason of it — and in 
more ways than one the Manitoba School question im- 
pressed itself deeply upon the political history of Can- 
ada. 

The agitation had begun in 1889, when the new 
Greenway administration resolved to abolish Sepa- 
rate Schools in Manitoba, and carried legislation to 
this effect. This was not only a subversion of a sys- 
tem that had existed for seventy years — or since the 



898 FATHER LACOMBE 889 

lately Provencher at St. Boniface opened the first 
chools of the Canadian West: it was also in direct 
ontravention of the rights in educational matters as- 
ured to the Cathohc minority by the IVIanitoba Act 
f 1870. 

The INIanitoba minority held the universal claim 
f their co-religionists to direct the schools maintained 
y their own taxes, to select text-books for use therein, 
nd to provide moral training based upon religious 
istruction. These claims are not ordinarily objec- 
ionable to politicians of any creed, if the majority of 
oters in a community hold these views. When, how- 
ver, separate-school rate-payers are in the minority 
—by the laws of opportunism that control the average 
loliticians — the claims of the separate-school advo- 
ate are most reprehensible. 

INIanitoba politicians seized upon defects in the 
raining and qualifications of separate-school teachers 
condemn the whole system. Archbishop Tache 
nd his school-boards growing aware of the defects, 
ad resolved to improve conditions, but their oppor- 
unity was now gone. 

Leading his people in an agitation for their rights 
lie Archbishop cited not only the jNIanitoba Act, but 
lie British North America Act — the Constitution of 
be Dominion — as providing protection for the minor- 
:y and guaranteeing separate-school rights. His 
larty instanced the generous treatment of the Prot- 
stant minority in Quebec: they appealed to a sense 
f conmion justice for the inalienable right of the re- 



340 FATHER LACOMBE 189J 

spectable parent to educate his child wheresoever he 
would if he were himself willing to pay for it. 

But as nothing they said made any impression upor 
the provincial authorities Tache's party carried theii 
grievance to Ottawa. They brought test-cases in the 
courts and these were finally carried to the Priry 
Council where the aggrieved party lost. 

The Haultain administration of the Northwest 
Territories, taking a leaf out of Manitoba's book, in 
turn deprived the minority of their old school rights, 
The work was done with a finer hand than in Mani- 
toba, the leader being a man of much political finesse 
and accomplishment; the results were similar. 

Petitions for relief now poured in from the wesi 
to the Ottawa Government, but with Sir John Mac- 
donald dead and his party groping for such another 
tactician and leader, the time was unpropitious for 
decision: particularly as the Manitoba Governmeni 
was now shielding itself behind a new cry — Provin- 
cial Rights. 

Echoes of the discussion rose on all sides and the 
question, regarded by Ottawa's politicians as their 
sorest affliction, gradually assumed national propor- 
tions. On one side were the Catholics of the west 
led by the Archbishop of St. Boniface and his minis- 
ter plenipotentiary, supported by all the Catholics of 
Eastern Canada. On the other hand were the Mani- 
toba Government and a majority of western Prot- 
estants backed by the entire element in Canada which 
aproximates to the non-Conformists in England. 



1893 FATHER LACOMBE 341 

It was with small hope of any immediate settlement 
that Father Lacombe returned home in 1893, confi- 
dent he would soon have to come east again and take 
further steps in the camj^aign. 

On his return he received a charmingly playful let- 
:er from his old friend at St. Boniface, whose redoubt- 
ible spirit could still be gay, although he describes 
limself as an "infirm old man," and the sufferings 
from his disease have become so grave that he knows 
limself to be in the Valley of Shadows. 

The letter was in reply to one Father Lacombe had 
vritten amiouncing his resumption of the life of a 
Hermit, with his unanswerable argument of 'On est 
Ermite ou on ne Vest pas' (One is a Hermit or 
)ne is not) — the inference being that he was a Hermit 
because he desired to be and said he was, tout simple- 
nent. ^-Nniether or not the exigencies of his work 
irove him to unceasing travels, that fact was not to 
ie permitted to upset his claim. 

The aged Archbishop meets liis friend's views play- 
'ully, but with an undercurrent of seriousness that 
luggests his own next cloister will be the tomb. The 
etter, which is replete with a delicious humour, suf- 
'ers in the translation. 

The Archbishop first professes his desire to be a 
lermit, too; then says: 

"In the depths of solitude and silence I salute jou by the 
latchword of your new Institution, 'Brother, one is a Hermit 
)r one is not.' So since we may no longer mix ourselves in 
he things of this world I return Mr. Reed's letter to you. 



342 FATHER LACOMBE 1893 

I am even going to make my adieux to Monseigneur Durieu, 
who will not forego his existence on the agitated sea of the 
world. In the fear that his example might mislead me, the 
Inspirer of our isolation yesterday enveloped all visible Na- 
ture in a white shroud, an image of that which we will take 
at the gateway of our cloister, to indicate that nothing pro- 
fane or soiled should enter within that Sanctuary, or that at 
least if one enters there with stains one must live without 
spot (tache) to become a dove {colombe). This last word, 
is it not merely an evolution from lacombe? 

"Yes, brother, one is a Hermit or one is not, and as we 
are hermits, let us separate to unite again in the Lord. 

"I commit you to God, Brother, till we meet again, 
"Bbothee Alexander of the 

"Observance op Pinchee Ceeek." 

On May 14th, Father Lacombe writes from his 
new Hermitage. Now for the first time appears on 
his letters the rubber stamp — "Ermitage de St. 
Michel"; he is determined to give his hermitage an 
air of permanency. He writes to Father Legal: 

"Me voila — again a Hermit. I wish that those wags who 
will not take my position seriously could see into my Hermit- 
age for a little while to-day — Sunday. Alone on the top of 
my hill with my dog and my cat again, I say to myself, 'It 
is so one is a Hermit!' I go into church to visit my one 
neighbour, who is also my kind Saviour, and I repeat the 
prayers and the office of hermits. Ah, wags, you who say 
there are no hermits now! Erudemini . . . flu homir 
num." 

About the same time he writes that he is expecting 



1893 FATHER LACOMBE 848 

I visit from his friend Sir William Van Home, who 
lad lately written repeating his protests against the 
jroposed retirement of Father Lacombe: 

"When it is given to one like you to kindle the love and 
'everence of everybody you meet, is it right that you should 
mry yourself in a Hermitage? Surely not." 

Sir William need not have feared that the delight- 
'ul old plainsman would be lost to his friends. He 
vas a Hermit: assuredly — had he not proclaimed the 
'act throughout the Dominion? But lais friends were 
lot to lose him ; for he was a Hermit — who would not 
tay at home. 

He finds the modem Hermit cannot live in a grotto 
)n figs and water. Like many another missionary- 
Jriest he learns again the cares of housekeeping, for 
here is no lay-brotlrer to spare for this mission, and 
vhen a niece who was with him leaves to return east 
le has the greatest difficulty in getting someone to 
;ome in from time to time to keep his house orderly. 
Ele grumbles: "This business of doing the cooking 
loes not agree with me." 

Perhaps the cooking or the quiet or the loneliness 
Jailed upon him, for when in June he received a tele- 
gram from his old Alma JNIater at L'Assomption — • 
'Pere Lacombe required for our feast without fail" 
—he goes without demur, to 1?he joys of the open 
■oad and the jeers of his younger brethren. 

After the College feast he went to Ottawa and 
irranged with Mr. Daly to formally open the hos- 



3U 



FATHER LACOMBE 



1893 



pital that summer, then on to Nicolet where he saw 
"those dear Princesses" bid a tremulous farewell to 
their quiet convent and sister nuns. A few days 
later he followed them to the west. 

The autumn finds him quietly settled at the Her- 
mitage — rested and content although very poor. 
He has to meet some of his debts by selling his horse_ 
and the heavy waggon at the mission. 



XII 

Early in the New Year of 1894 he was called to 
5t. Boniface. The Archbishop, with sufficient 
rouble for one human frame in the grave disease he 
vas battUng, had set himself to meet a fresh crisis 
n the School Question as determinedly as forty years 
jefore he had reversed his Superior's order to aban- 
ion the western missions. 

Physically unable to carry on any negotiations at 
3ttawa now, he turned all active work over to Father 
Lacombe, and in the fulfilment of this mission laid 
m liim by liis ailing friend — statesmen, prelates and 
aity were to come equally under the influence of the 
3resuasive old man who knew but one cry, "Give us 
)ack our rights in our Schools!" 

Since the repeated efforts of the Archbishop and 
lis party to secure remedial measures had been un- 
ivailing the Archbishop's next step was to secure 
he formal co-operation of all his brother-prelates in 
ZsLuada, and it was for this delicate mission that he 
lad again called upon his old Hermit. 

Father Lacombe brought the Archbishop's latest 
md most notable IMemorial on the School Question 
o Montreal and had it published there. On April 
S45 



846 FATHER LACOMBE 1894 

1st he writes to Father Legal that the Bishops have 
all agreed to unite with Tache in demanding the res- 
toration of their school rights. He continues : 

"Imagine, I leave to-morrow evening for St. Boniface with 
the Bishop of Valleyfield and secretary. I have seen all the 
Bishops of Quebec, and with Bishop Grandin have prevailed 
upon Their Lordships to make our cause their own. Rone, 
they all desire, and will regard as their doyen the Archbishop 
of St. Boniface. It has been decided that Bishop Emard 
will be charged with this important mission to go in the name 
of his colleagues and carry their kindest wishes to Archbishop 
Tache and convey their sympathy with him, asking him what 
should be done uno consensu; to decide too upon a plan of 
campaign and some form of agitation to compel, by puhiic 
demand, the authorities to render justice to us. I have just 
come from Ottawa with Bishop Grandin. We met there the 
Bishop of Montreal and Bishop Emard. C'est serieux. The 
Memoir, of which I have had thousands of copies printed in 
French and English is making a sensation. It is a thunder- 
bolt to the Government. 

"Mcintosh and Haultain are at Ottawa. The frightened 
Ministry would wish to make them give way, but they will 
not, seeing that they have already been supported against us." 

The petition now forwarded to Ottawa was signed 
by thirty-one prelates and was a wide and statesman- 
like appeal for justice. The document was pre- 
sented by Father Lacombe in person. 

From the serious tone of the resultant Order in 
Council it would seem to have impressed the Govern- 
ment more than any previous effort of the Catholic 



1894* FATHER LACOMBE 347 

party: but whatever the plans and policy of the gov- 
erning party this year they were upset by the tragi- 
cally sudden death of the Prime JNIinister — Sir John 
Thompson — in December at Windsor Castle. 
Rumours of definite remedial action began to take 
shape however. 

Occasional pleasures marked Father Lacombe's 
stay in the East, but it was for the most part fa- 
tiguing, and he sighed for his hermitage. He writes 
Father Legal on May 20th from St. Boniface : 

"Dear Friend, — How I have hastened my return. How 
tired and worried I am with .this commerce ! Twenty-four 
hours before leaving Montreal I received a telegraph from 
Archbishop Tache and the Superior-General asking me not to 
leave before I received their letters. Et puis, all the same I 
came away." 

He did not go directly to his Hermitage then how- 
ever. 

At St. Boniface he was asked to accompany the 
Superior-General who had come from France on a 
tour of the western missions, and he complied with 
pleasure, for he was always finely susceptible to the 
company of persons dowered in heart and intellect. 
These he found united in the commanding person of 
Father Soullier, their Superior-General. 

While at Kamloops on June 21, Father Lacombe 
received word of the serious form Archbishop Tache's 
iUness had taken, and of the operation performed 
n the hope of saving his life. . . . The follow- 
ng day he was informed of the Archbishop's death. 



34-8 FATHER LACOMBE 1894 

His sense of loss and grief was acute, for while 
Archbishop Tache was widely accounted a great man 
and a good one — to his colleagues who knew him best 
the Archbishop was their Well-Beloved, their little 
General. 

Time has given him his rank as one of the noblest 
figures in Canadian history: a man commanding re- 
spect alike from the man of the world and the man 
of the sanctuary. 

"Here I am so lonesome — ennuye hien gros. 
What an undertaking to have come here! But let 
us stop — ^this is not to recite to you my Jeremiads, 
but to talk about that man who was drowned with 
his horses crossing the Kooten^y — a lay-brother here, 
French-Canadian, fears it may be his brother who 
was coming from Montana to select a farm in Al- 
berta. . . ." 

It is our delightfully human old missionary who 
in August, 1894, writes this plaint from Edmonton 
where he has been called as pastor of St. Joachim's 
Church. His heart is not in the task or the place. 
"What a post for my white hairs!" . . . "It is 
the hotel of the diocese," he says of his new residence 
— with a continual stream of callers, lay and clerical, 
going to and from St. Albert or the northern mis- 
sions. There are no Indians under his care, and his 
heart is crying out for the obdurate Blackfeet on 
the wide southern plains and his Hermitage in the 
foothills. 



L894 FATHER LACOiMBE S49 

Edmonton, notwithstanding Fatlier Lacombe's 
grumbling, was now a town of some life and aspira- 
ion. The extension of the railway from Calgary 
lad put new energj' into the frontier settlement. 
3y the construction of this line the old stage route 
vas thrown into disuse and the park-country of the 
lorth opened to settlement. As in the past Father 
Lacombe's information had largely assisted ' the 
engineers selecting the route for the road and on its 
completion Van Home sent a request to him for ap- 
iropriate names for the new villages springing up 
dong the line. Wetaskiwin, Ponoka, Otaskawan 
vere among the names he gave, wliile others hke 
Lacombe, Leduc and Hobbema were chosen by Sir 
kVilliam, who as a connoisseur in men and art at one 
itroke placed on the map of the west the names of 
wo pioneers and an artist whose works he admired. 

Despite his grumbling Father Lacombe soon grew 
iccustomed to modern Edmonton. By Christmas 
le had put down some roots in his new abode. He 
vas having a good rectory built; a hospital to be 
naintained by the Grey Nuns was under way, and 

1 ". . . The Company was indebted to him for very much useful 
nformation concerning the western prairies and the various mountain 
)asses and his information was more exact and valuable than that of 
;nybody else. He not only knew the country intimately but he had 
I wonderful faculty for describing it so that one could see it \ividly. 
'. remember well his description later on of the country behveen Cal- 
rary and Edmonton when the railway there was contemplated. This 
lescription left no exploratory work for the engineers to do — they knew 
ust where the line should be laid." — Letter from Sir William Van Home 
o the author, March 9, 1910. 



350 FATHER LACOMBE 1895 

he begins to be absorbed in new interests. There are 
no complaints or longings for the south. He has 
again made a place for himself in this Edmonton, 
which he knew before it was an Edmonton, but which 
with its strange faces he sorrowfully felt had small 
welcome for the old pioneer when he first returned. I 

In Christmas week he writes to Father Legal that 
he is now living in his new "palace." The Govern- 
ment has given him a telephone ; the City has placed . 
an electric light before his door. He surveys hfe 
with equanimity. Another of the Old Guard, he 
notes, has retired. After half a century of devoted ■ 
work and subsistence on dried meat and fish and a 
meagre menu generally his old Superior of Lac Ste. 
Anne is enjoying the rest and physical comforts of 
St. Albert. Father Lacombe's nimble mind seizes on 
the facts and thus sums them up dehciously for 
Father Legal — 

"Pere Remas is in absolute retirement at St. Al- 
bert's, like a rat in a cheese." 

To Father Lacombe staying "for penance" at Ed-i 
monton "the great Question of the hour," as he nom 
calls it, is to redeem the poorer class of Metis before i 
it is too late. To tliis end he initiates a new worli 
in which he will go and seek them in the highwayfy 
and byways of the west. His voice must reach thd 
dilapidated shacks on the outskirts of towns and vil i 
lages and call thence those becoming morally, phys. 
ically and financially, the lame, the halt and thl. 
weaklings of the west. 



1895 FATHER LACOMBE 351 

Then, he plans to turn to the discouraged and un- 
skilled half-breeds on poor farms, where they are 
endeavouring to stifle the blood's call for the gun and 
trap in order that they may accustom their hands 
to the ploughshare and make a decent living for the 
always numerous progeny. 

From the one place and the other their old shep- 
herd, who had known and loved the ISIetis in their 
Golden Age, would now gather them into some fer- 
tile corner of the west, remote from the influence 
Df white men, their liquor and their scorn. Instruc- 
tion in farming and the ele'mentaiy trades will be 
given his JNIetis there, implements be provided for 
them : he wiU create a Metis Utopia ! 
i Tliis plan had been taking shape in his mind for 
some time, and during the past two years, he had 
repeatedly urged the Government at Ottawa to 
^rant sufficient land for the purpose. The tre- 
iiendous earnestness of the old missionarj" had its 
jffect. Lord and Lady Aberdeen, who were now 
:he vice-regal representatives in Canada and whose 
juest he was on each visit to the east, were early 
.von to his belief in the plan. Sir IMackenzie 
Bowell listening one day to his ardent advocacy, ex- 
laimed : 

"Your plan is an act of Christianity for you: for 
IS it would be an act of patriotism." 

Now in 1895 Fatlier Lacombe resolved to make a 
•.upreme effort to realize his scheme. He wrote to 
Bishop Grandin: 



352 FATHER LACOMBE 1891 

"We, the old missionaries must not forget what we hav' 
done for the Metis and what they have done for us. Fo 
their fine attachment and devotion gives them a right to ou 
affections still, notwithstanding the demoralization of a grea 
number. Let me expend what physical force and energy re 
mains to me in labouring for this undertaking with which Goi 
has inspired me, and in which I have faith. It seems to mi 
that Providence has preserved to me, at my advanced age 
such measure of health as I have simply that I may under 
take and carry through this work which to others may ap 
pear impossible and absurd." 

Bishop Grandin was doubtful of the result, bu 
he could not withhold his consent to that plea, quaM 
fying it, however, with a warning: 

"Go, and may God bless your zeal, but remem 
her if to-day is a Pakn Sunday, there will soon b( 
a Good Friday." 

The warning fell on deaf ears: nothing couk 
dampen Father Lacombe's ardour. 

In February, 1895, he went east to St. Bonifaci 
for the consecration of Archbishop Langevin, thf 
successor of Archbishop Tache, and from there t( 
Ottawa. Here he received such encouragement ii 
his plan that he felt justified in instructing two ca 
pable brethren. Father Therien and Father Morin 
to go and look for a site for his colony in the vicinit) 
of his old mission of St. Paul de Cris, north of thf 
North Saskatchewan, 

A letter to the Hon. A. C. La Riviere, M. P. 
written by Father Lacombe whilst journeying east 



895 FATHER LACOMBE S58 

idicates Hona^ strongly he was preoccupied with his 
dans to uplift the Metis: 

"On the shores of Lake Superior 
"Om the Railway, 

"19th February, 1895. 
y'erij dear old friend: 

"Seated in a royal palace car of the Pacific, meditating on 
he things of the past — of the Great Past, and dreaming of 
rhat the future may have in store for us I am assailed by a 
housand thoughts which flutter through my head like a flight 
f birds. 

"I think of my benefactors so numerous and so generous, 
nd I pray for them. I think especially of that King of 
he Canadian Pacific, Van Home, my brother by adoption, 
rho has done so much for our country and for our mis- 
ionaries. 

"But above all the souvenirs, happy and sad, of le bon 
ieux temps, above all my pre-occupation with the future, 
overs one thought which little by little is absorbing my mind 
ntirely. Now I wish to make of the realization of this idea 
—of this dream, as some may perhaps maliciously call it — 
he business of the remainder of my poor life as a mission- 

ry- 

"The Latins said that they feared the man who read but 
ne book. Timeo hominem unius libri. Mot, I have but one 
Ian, one supreme plan and that is to secure to one unhappy 
ace a place of peace and of sweet prosperity. . . ." 

He refers then to letters enclosed, addressed to 
imself by some jMetis — "naive letters full of con- 
idence," asking him to help them get a bit of land 
D farm. These he says, are but some of many let- 



S54. FATHER LACOMBE 189 

ters received from INIetis in INIontana and the Ca 
nadian west; while a prominent westerner has jus 
written asking him to look after other Metis whi 
are in a very bad way. 

Father Laeombe concluded his letter by tellinj 
Mr. La Riviere that there were at least 8,000 Meti 
in the west, most of them poor, many of them de 
moralized. They were undoubtedly in a bad way 
but, their venerable advocate insisted that traders 
missionaries, and the white race generally owed then 
a real debt for their diplomatic services with the In 
dians in the opening days of the white man's era 
They were kind and grandly hospitable then — woulc 
the Government not be hospitable to these poor un 
fortunates now? 

It was in this way Father Laeombe approache( 
anyone and everyone who could possibly influence th( 
Canadian Government to grant his request. 

When he arrived in Ottawa he found the Schoo 
Question in a fresh ferment. Archbishop Tache wai 
dead, but the war he had planned went on. At lasl 
the Government understood that the Catholics of al 
Canada were supporting the western minority ir 
their demand for a restoration of their schools, anc 
realized the need of action. 

Father Laeombe wrote in March to Father Legal 

"How big and hot this school question becomes. We havi 
reached a most critical moment. Truly it is little reassuring 
Our adversaries, obstinate enemies armed with falsehood, cal 
umny and ruse, are achieving the impossible to obscure th( 



895 FATHER LACO.MBE S65 

aestion and gain their cause — which is that of Sutan. What 
going to happen in tlie face of such opposition? Is the 
overnment going to resign? Will they hold a session? Or 
ill they make an appeal to the electorate?" 

Again : 

"The School Question of Manitoba will not be settled for 
good length of time. It is true that an Ordcr-in-Council 
going to be adopted, sent to the legislature of Manitoba 

nd doubtless will be respected there. 
"But when will this Remedial Ordinance be proclaimed 

iw, if the parliament is dissolved and an appeal is made to 

le public? I have talked so much to-day that I am tired to 

eath. . . ." 

The Remedial Order was passed by the Council 
n March 21st, but to become effective it had still 
) make its way through Parliament. 

Father Lacombe returned west in April, but the 
jmmer found him again in Ottawa together with 
le Mayor of Edmonton delegated to secure a bridge 
cross the Saskatchewan at Edmonton. The rail- 
■ay terminated in the meadows across the river and 
s the directors would not incur the expense of a 
ridge to go into Edmonton, and the village grown 
p from the old trading-post would not move over 
[le river to the railway, matters between the two 
tood at an impasse. An uncertain ferry solved the 
roblem fairly at some seasons, but these circum- 
:ances naturally hampered the growth of Edmon- 
)n: while its towns-folk maintained a rebellious at- 



356 FATHER LACOMBE 18 

titude toward the Government and railwa}'^ compan 

Various demands sent by them to Ottawa for r 
lief were disregarded, for Edmonton's pioneers, 
splendid group of Old-Timers, were more versed 
Indian-trading and horse-racing than in diplomac 
Notably in 1893 they had defied a departmental o 
der to move the Government Land Oifice across tl 
river and after an exciting comic-opera insurrecti( 
with a Home-Guard, guns and Mounted Pohce 
evidence — they brought the Ottawa Government 
terms. All of which was soothing to local pride, b 
disastrous to the hope of Government grants. 

Now in 1895 the Town Fathers conceived the idi 
that their one hope lay in this irresistible old mi 
sionary-diplomat, who had a few years before secun 
a grant from the Government for a bridge at d 
gary. Father Lacombe acquiesced readily, and wi 
the Mayor endeavoured not only to get the bridg 
but also to have the Calgary and Edmonton lii 
continued across the river. 

In the discharge of his mission Father Lacoml 
interviewed the new Premier, Sir Mackenzie Bowe 
Foster, Daly, Ouitnet, Sir Charles Tupper, Sir W: 
liam Van Home, and William Whyte; and in r 
lation to the Calgary and Edmonton he approach! 
the leading stockholders in Toronto and Winnipe 

He was readily granted the bridge. However, oi 
member of the Government who had no person 
cause for dislike of the Edmontonians of that di 
but who had an unqualified distaste for their methoi 



1895 FATHER LACOMBE 357 

af doing parliamentary business, confided to Father 
Laconibc that they were miccuth and buffoons. 

The old priest kept the ministerial comnieiit to 
liimself then, though it is likely that Edmonton Avith 
its generous quota of western independence would 
liave cared little if it had heard the remark. The 
bridge was soon built, and up to 1912 this monument 
to Father Lacombe's diplomacy has had the distinc- 
tion of serving Edmonton's needs alone. 

During this visit east Father Lacombe also secured 
a Government grant of four townships of land for 
the jNIetis colony, and he returned home shortly after 
with an enthusiasm and light-heartedness that 
laughed at his sixty-eight years. 

But his work for the Metis colony had only be- 
gun: he had still to secure funds for its operation. 
By letters and personal visits on every trip he made 
to the east for years tliereafter the old missionary 
was obliged to beg for money to help his !Metis with 
their buildings and purchase of farm implements. 

The work was all the more difficult that jieople 
generally believed the plan destined to fail. 

Many of his brethren laughed at the plan. To 
them it was hopeless to make the half-breed leave 
the squalid splendor of the city's fringe for the 
prosaic work on open fields at St. Paul de ]Metis. 
Some papers, opposition organs, naturally attacked 
the project as a misappropriation of Government 
lands and assistance and occasionally referred bit- 
terly to Father Lacombe. 



358 FATHER LACOMBE 189i 

It would be useless to say that he did not feel al 
this acutely — particularly the laughter of those o; 
his friends who did not believe in the scheme, thougl 
they vowed they loved the old missionary for hii 
great heart and mistaken zeal. He felt the hurt, bu 
he was not in any way deterred. He believec 
. . . that was sufficient. 

His next step was to issue a circular letter printec 
in French, English and Cree calling the poorer Metii 
to take shelter in his new colony. His letter in iti 
solicitude for the welfare of the half-breeds reveal; 
with what poignancy the old priest's mind dwelt or 
what might be called the tragedy of civihzing the In 
dian; the gradual degradation of this child-race— 
brought out of paganism by Christianity as taugh 
— on coming into contact with Christianity as prac 
tised by the majority. 



XIII 

The journey to Eastern Canada from which Father 
jacombe returned in August was the second he had 
lade within six months, yet once more at home his 
eet are "burning" to take him away again. 

Each month tinds him in a different quarter of 
Alberta, and at the New Year, 1896, he is in Ottawa 
gain a minister plenipotentiary from the western 
Jishops to act in the school question. The moment 
^as opportune, for general elections were approach- 
ig — and governments are proverbially impression- 
ble before general elections. 

He M'rites on January 9th: 

Very dear Father: 

"Where are we now? To what point are we drifting.'' 
f you could look in on the trouble, the anxiety, and all that 
; passing at this moment in the city of Ottawa you would 
e astonished. The Conserv'ative Government is falling to 
ieces. The question of the Manitoba Schools is more and 
lore uncertain. Each day brings new fears. 

"The newspapers have already told you of the embarrass- 
lent which exists. The Bowell Government is greatly weak- 
led by the defection of several ministers and by the 
nfavourable results of bye-elections. 

"Sir Mackenzie Bowell, my friend, whom I regard as sin- 
;re and who is going to fall in defending us, is no longer 
359 



360 FATHER LACOMBE 1896 

supported. Things are going badly. Laurier — what will 
he do when he arrives in power? For this is very probable, 
unless a re-organization takes place with the formation of a 
new cabinet by Tupper as leader and premier. 

"For my part, I have no confidence in this arrangement. 
Since the Conservative party has come to this point and as 
our Catholic people show themselves so indifferent and so in- 
capable — C'est egal — it is as well that the Liberals should 
come at once to take their place. 

"How tired I am with all this bustle! All the same, not- 
withstanding my occupations and pre-occupations I do not 
forget you. I have seen about the schools. 

"This is very regrettable, but what would you have me do? 
The state of politics here does us an injury. My plans are 
all upset. This throws us back a year at least. . . . 
The day before yesterday I dined with Sir Mackenzie Bowell. 
Truly he is greatly disgusted with the state of affairs. I 
think that he will perhaps resign to-day. 

"Attention. . . . La, the trouble will commence again 
— I tell you — greater than ever. I sigh for my Hermitage. 
Is it possible that those who pretend to be my friends plan 
only to separate me from it!" 

A letter he wrote about this time to Wilfrid 
Laurier, the French-Canadian leader of the Opposi- 
tion brought a lively squall about his sturdy self; but 
he was equal to meeting it. This letter which had 
been sent as a private communication to Laurier had 
been — possibly in the exigencies of politics — pub- 
lished in full and with unkind comment by La Presse, 
an active organ of the Liberal party in Quebec at 
that time. 



J96 FATHER LACOMBE 861 

The letter to Laurier reads: 

"MoNTEEAL, January 20, 1896 
^on. Wilfrid Laurier, M.P., Ottawa: 
"My Deae Sie: At this critical moment for the School 
aestion of ilanitoba, permit an old missionary, to-day the 
prcsentative of the Bishops of our country in this cause 
lich absorbs the thoughts of everyone — permit me, I ask, to 
ake an appeal to your faith, to your patriotism and to your 
nse of justice to beg you to comply with our request. It 
in the name of our Bishops, of the Hierarchy and of Ca- 
idian Catholics that we demand of your party, of which you 
e the worthy leader, to aid us in settling this famous ques- 
3n, and to do this bj- voting with us for the Remedial Bill 
ong with the Government. 

"We do not ask you to vote for the Government, but for 
e Bill which will restore our rights, in the form in which 
will be presented in a few days in the House. I consider, 
■ rather we all consider, that this act of courage, of good- 
\\ and of sincerity on your part and of those who follow 
)ur policy, will be greatly in the interests of your party, 
peciaUy at the time of the general elections. 
"I must add that we could not accept your proposition of 
Commission for any consideration, and we shall do every- 
ing to oppose it. If, though may Heaven prevent this, you 
) not feel it your duty to meet our just demand and that 
e Government which desires to give us the promised legisla- 
jn should be beaten and overturned, the while it stands true 
the end of the fight, I must inform you with regret that 
e whole episcopate — as one man — united with the clergy 
II rise to support those who have fallen in defending us. 
"I trust you may pardon my frankness, which makes me 
leak in this way. 



S62 FATHER LACOMBE 1896 

"Although I am not an intimate friend of yours, I may 
say that we have always been on good terms. I have always 
regarded you as a gentleman, an honourable citizen and a 
clever man, qualified to be at the head of a political party. I 
trust that Providence may sustain your courage and your 
energy for the good of our country. 

"I remain respectfully and very sincerely, 
"Honourable Sir, 

"Your devoted and humble servant, 
"A. Lacombe, O. M. I. 

"P. S. Some members of your party reproach me for 
holding aloof from you and ignoring you. You have too 
much judgment not to understand my position. Having no 
political party myself I address myself to those who have been 
placed by the people at the head of aifairs. If one day the 
voice of the nation calls you to the direction of public affairs, 
I shall be loyal to you and have confidence in you — as I am 
to-day to those who are opposing you. 

"If you desire to see me and to have any further explana- 
tions I shall be at your service whenever it pleases you at the 
University of Ottawa or at your private office, provided that 
you inform me of the hour selected by you. 

"I shall be at Ottawa on the 23rd to remain there for sev- 
eral days. 

"A. L., O. M. I." 

A despatch sent out from Ottawa to several Op- 
position journals on February 21, claimed that the 
significance of Father Lacombe's letter to Laurier 
was that "this old, respected and confiding and de- 
ceived missionary . . . has been used as an in- 
termediary between the Dominion Government and 



J1896 FATHER LACOMBE 363 

the Quebec hierarchy." . . . The letter, it states, 
fs a bold attempt on the part of the clerical forces 
'to intimidate and coerce the leader of the Liberal 
party, whom they "threaten to destroy if he does not 
come to the support of the position taken by certain 
bishops who have mismanaged and bedevilled this 
'subject from the start." 

I This despatch, designed like scores of others of 
Ibhis period to make political capital out of events, 
purports to be well-disposed to Father Lacombe. It 
is less flattering than direct attacks however in mak- 
jng the old "confiding and deceived missionary" out 
to be a simpleton and a tool. The writer ignores, 
pr is ignorant of the fact, that the management of 
the School campaign from the start lay in the hands 
of the stateman- Archbishop of St. Boniface and his 
lieutenant and counsellor. Father Lacombe. And 
while an outcast, foot-sore and shiftless, could readily 
impose on the heart of the latter — no pohtician, lay 
or clerical, could ever deceive his mind. 
I Le Journal, an active organ of the Government 
party now as in duty bound in the political campaign 
published an editorial rebuking La Presse and tliose 
ivho inspired its comment, and proceeded to interpret 
Father Lacombe's letter in another way than the un- 
pleasant one of La Presse. Wliereupon Father La- 
bombe publicly voiced his thanks to the editor of the 
Tournal, and this went to swell the tide of journalistic 
iterature rising about the School Question and 
everyone engaged in the contest: 



364. FATHER LACOMBE 1896 

"I thank you for the interest which you take in me. It is 
well ; you explain the letter as it should be explained. . . . 
Thank you. I shall see you soon and I shall then give you 
certain information that will make those who have made an 
iU-use of this letter blush. 

"Truly I regret that La Presse has forgotten itself in such 
a manner. It harms itself more than me. People will rec- 
ognize that its zeal is a sham and this will only have the ef- 
fect of damaging its arguments against 'the letter.' . . . 

"Since my friend, Mr. Laurier, is not more scrupulous than 
this, to take advantage of intimate communications sent him 
in the interests of the country's peace, to violate my confidence 
and exploit my views for his own benefit, by means of journals 
which live upon sensations : that is his affair. 

"Those who cry out against an old missionary, who has 
every right and a definite commission to aid in the solution of 
this burning question of the schools, let them reflect a little 
and give me credit for my good intentions toward the Liberal 
chief to whom I only wish to do good. 

"If La Presse had been a witness of my intimate interviews 
recently with a man whom I consider as a noble citizen and 
worthy of being the head of a party, this sheet would have 
expressed its zeal in another manner — How can people 
know how to write so well, yet to act in such a disgraceful 
manner ! 

"For your part, continue to defend our cause with courage. 
Say to those who read your articles and who will carry the 
word on to all my compatriots — that we will go right to 
the end. We have decided to assist those who to-day have the 
power in their hands in order that justice may be done to us. 
Those who wish to make political capital out of this question, 
I disown them. A solemn moment has arrived. 



1896 FATHER LACOMBE 365 

"To-day after five years of suffering on the part of an 
appressed minority, which I am commissioned to defend, I 
make an appeal to all friends of Justice no matter to what 
party they belong, and I beg them in the name of patriotism 
find honour to fall into line on our side. Is it not simply 
:his that I have done with Mr. Laurier and his supporters? 

"Why then does La Presse in its zeal imply to me such 
False motives.'' 

"It is not now the time to reply to that journal when it 
questions my standing with the Hierarchy. For the present 
et us only try to settle this question of the Manitoba Schools, 
ind to this end let all intelligent minds lend their co-opera- 
;ion in what is an act of justice and patriotism. 

"When this question is to be decided then may the nation 
recollect itself and prepare loyally and honourably to unite 
apon the field of combat, where once again people wiU give 
'reely and conscientiously their votes for the party which 
;hould govern the country. 

"As an old missionary accustomed to live among the sav- 
ige tribes or ministering as a priest to the new settlers I am 
'ar from any desire to claim the skill of politicians. To my 
Treat regret, circumstances have thrown me into this at- 
nosphere so foreign to my habits. Only obedience and duty 
ran sustain me in the midst of these contradictions which I 
im encountering. . . ." 

The attacks made by various papers upon Father 
L<acombe finally roused the Montreal Witness, a 
3aper of much editorial weight in the nineties and one 
leither Conservative nor Catholic, to enter the lists 
ind there break a lance for the old missionary — 
vhose figure despite its inherent sturdiness presented 



366 FATHER LACOMBE 1896 

a pathetic aspect as this storm of abuse broke around 
him in public and private. 

Many of the Liberal party, who were raising the 
storm, probably did honestly believe that Father La- 
combe or the Hierarchy behind him, was using the 
School Question as an instrument to aid the Con- 
servative party in the approaching elections. In 
this, however, they did him an injustice. His one 
political dogma through life has been to uphold the 
party in power, to assist it in its administration — 
just so long as in his belief it was acting justly and 
in the interests of the people — as he saw the interests 
of the people. There was an oiRcial opposition to 
hackle and criticise the administration: his duty as 
a non-partisan was to uphold it. 

When it was no longer able to serve the peo- 
ple or fit to govern it — then Red or Blue; Grit or 
Tory — he wanted to see its departure from office 
hastened and the new brooms set in motion. . • . 
and he would cry right heartily — "Le Boi est mort: 
vive le Roil" 

Nor was this mere opportunism in the old mission- 
ary. It was something nearer a high ideal of pa- 
triotism. 

In 1896 he desired with all the ardour of his 
vigorous nature that the Conservatives should be re- 
turned to power, but simply because of their exist- 
ing pledges to grant remedial legislation with regard 
to the School Question. 

The tribute of the Montreal Witness of Febru- 



i 



L896 FATHER LACOMBE 367 

iry 2Gtli, 1896, first narrates the various services 
vhich Father Lacombe had rendered the country as 
in effective police-chaplain during the construction 
)f the first Canadian transcontinental road, and the 
;steem in which he was held by jirominent and dis- 
lerning men in Eastern Canada. It continues: 

"Father Lacombe has done able and effectual missionary 
vork amongst the Indians, -nhose fruit is seen in the good 
)rder which prevails amongst them, and the degree of civiliza- 
ion to which large numbers of them have attained. Apart 
'rom this aspect of his work, to which he has devoted himself 
lith much zeal, he has never been indifferent to the political 
lutlook. He has always watched the trend of public affairs 
rith much interest, and it is undoubted that he has more than 
•nee influenced legislation in directions which subserved the 
nterests of his Church as a whole. He has always wielded 
)ower at Ottawa. Having laboured successfully to improve 
ndians and keep them quiet, it has probably been felt that 
he Government owed him some return. At all events he has 
ilways had the ear of those in power, nor have any of his 
cquests been denied. 

"He is an able, far-seeing man, of keen intellect, and he 
)ursues his object, whatever it may be, with tireless but un- 
ibtrusive persistency. 

"The Good Father has a store of reminiscences, which, if 
)rinted, would make thrilling reading. He has spent forty 
fears among the Indians, turning his back upon civilization, 
.nd seen life in the wild in curious places. When he comes 
lack to the asphalt and the comer policeman and finds himself 
.t the table of a friend, the genial missionary makes demands 
ipon the memory and tells story after story of pioneer life, 



368 FATHER LACOMBE 1896 

of Indian cunning and stoicism, and diplomacy triumphing 
over force ... of humor and pathos which is found in 
all relations and associations of life. Ordinarily he is reticent 
and must be well assured that he can trust to honour before he 
relaxes, but if the demand be made upon him in a happy mo- 
ment the old missionary becomes a vivid dramatist, who en- 
chants the hearers with the varied incidents of a' fruitful ex- 
perience." 

On March 14th, Father Lacombe writes from 
Montreal to Father Legal: 

"I have just arrived, very tired, from Ottawa, where I have 
a trying combat to sustain. Who would credit it.'' Here 
am I, hurled into politics, exposed to many attacks of lies 
and falsifying. . . . Our Question of the schools is far 
from being decided. Our adversaries are making an infernal 
opposition, especially the Liberals of Quebec who are hypo- 
critically representing themselves as more Catholic than we 
are. It is unbelievable what people will attempt to get to 
power." 

This letter, like others of 1896, written to one of a 
small group of very intimate friends, is significant 
of Father Lacombe's real attitude on politics. It 
was a rather unusual outlook for one who had come 
so much in contact with pohticans. For while he was 
somewhat of a politician, he was nothing of a par- 
tisan, but frankly the representative of the Indians, 
the Metis and the Catholics of Western Canada. 

He regarded the Government solely as the public 
servant of the country rather than the opponents of 



.896 FATHER LACOMBE 369 

he "glorious Reform Party that had given Canada 
Constitutional Government," or the upholders of the 
iqually "glorious Conservative Party that with a pro- 
ective Tariff had made Canada." 

Notwithstanding his attitude he found himself 
iterally embroiled in the last heated struggles of a 
government which was now — in a desperate hope to 
ave itself — willing to grant in their Remedial Bill 
I'hat the Catholics of Canada had demanded for five 
ears unavailingly. Several of the political leaders 
lad all tlie time professed their belief in the justice of 
he minority's claims, although the}'' did nothing to 
ecure them. . . . "Governments," as Sir John 
ilacdonald once remarked, "would always prefer to 
io right if by doing so they could retain their seats 
>n the right side of the Treasury." 

The proposed Remedial Bill was the direct if he- 
ated result of the campaign instituted by the late 
Archbishop. The Catholics of Canada had formed 
hemselves into a defensive fighting phalanx, the at- 
ack upon their schools having effected this, as it al- 
I'ays has elsewhere and is quite certain to do at any 
ime. 

They had effectual argimient in living thousands 
if Canadians educated in Separate Schools and who 
vere as broad-minded and as loyal citizens as any of 
heir countrymen and equally well-equipped to fill 
heir positions in life. 

The party was enthusiastically led in this instance 
ly their bishops. Most of these prelates conformed 



370 FATHER LACOMBE 1896 

ordinarily to the understanding that a clergyman 
should not in his pubhc capacity use his clerical pres- 
tige to sway man to his private opinion on political 
matters, however wise or legitimate his opinion as an 
individual might be. In this instance, however, 
where the conscience and religious life of a whole peo- 
ple were affected, they took sides squarely on the 
question. They acted with as avowed a purpose as 
in more recent years the non-Conformist clergymen 
of Great Britian have come out in chapels and even 
upon the hustings to combat the Education Act of 
the Unionist party. 

The Canadian prelates sent pastoral letters to the 
parishes under their jurisdiction, calling on their peo- 
ple to support the Government wliich had promised 
remedial legislation. 

But the courage to apply even this remedy had 
been achieved too late by the Conservatives. The 
people of Quebec had lost faith in the sincerity of the 
Government's intentions. Several very wise heads 
in the clerical party believed the Remedial BiU was, 
as one said, only a "trompe d' oeil." 

Moreover, long before this Bill came in on the 
eve of an appeal to the country, the opposition, led 
by Wilfrid Laurier, the briUiant young French- 
Canadian leader, had imbued the laity of Quebec and 
many of the clergy with the belief that the Liberals 
would make a more satisfactory restoration of the 
Cathohc Schools to the Western minoritJ^ 

The choice then lay between the opposition's prom- 



896 FATHER LACOMBE 371 

es and the stop-gap policy of a dying Government 
-between Laurier and Tupper. 

Quebec en masse called for Laurier, and a "solid 
luebec" sways the balance of power this way or that, 
'he end came on June 23, 1896. The Goverimient 
ent down in a most crushing defeat: Quebec, once 
)used, had done its work thoroughly. 31inisters of 
le Crown saw themselves defeated there by mere 
riplings of politicians. Even the Liberals were 
itonished at the extent of their victory and the Con- 
rvatives had no words to describe it. 

It was this School Question which had overthro\vn 
le Conservative Government after a reign of eight- 
;n years, that brought the Liberal party back into 
5wer with its opportunity to be "more Catholic than 
e Bishops." In opposition it had shown the aspir- 
g politicians' fatal facility for making jiromises. 
nee in power, however, with an equal facihty for 
)st-campaign inertia conmion to all goveriuiients, it 
ive only an unsatisfactory settlement, and left the 
atholics more or less unpropitiated until ^ 1904. 

I Then in the Autonomy Act, it again constitutionally pledged Can- 
[i to uphold the minority's educational rights in the new provinces of 
berta and Saskatchewan. This somewhat cleared the political atmos- 
ere on the famous school question. 



XIV 

Shortly before Father Lacombe's departure fron 
Ottawa a pleasant note from Lord Aberdeen invitee 
him again to luncheon at Rideau Hall. This, wit) 
similar occasions that winter at the homes of othe: 
friends, marked for Father Lacombe tlie oasis in hi; 
journey through what he calls "an arid and burning 
wilderness of unpleasing pohtics." 

In June he was "freed from this Edmonton.' 
His old comrade Father Ledue was installed ther* 
"to the satisfaction of everyone and especially o; 
me," Father Lacombe writes to his friend in a brigh 
letter from Macleod as he stops over-night on hii 
way to his Hermitage. He is travelhng there "ir 
a big rough farm-waggon like any ordinary man 
Lo, what it means to be a Hermit." But he assure; 
the other he has no regret for his "palace" at Edmon 
ton or the fine horses and carriage he had there. 

Was ever a Hermit more abruptly or more per 
sistently thrown back into the world from his re 
treat? . . . On August 4th he is again in Mac 
leod, called to Calgary by the serious illness of Bishop 
Grandin. The Bishop lies in the Calgary hospita 
pending the doctor's decision as to the need of go- 
ing to Montreal. If he must go. Father Lacombe 
must take him. Poor Hermit! "I was already 
372 



897 FATHER LACOxMBE 373 

jated in the solitude of my Ilernutage and the 
rograninie of my repose was traced, when tlais un- 
icky telegram came. Am I then condemned to be 
Iways in motion?" he asks. 

Two weeks later he is in jNIontreal \\ith the bishop 
t the hospital. 

On May 13, 1897, his friend, Father Legal, was 
ppointed coadjutor to Bishop Grandin with right 
f succession. 

The announcement was a source of genuine pleas- 
re to Father Lacombe who had been expecting such 
n eventuality for years. Pie promptly sent the 
oung bishop the mitre and breviary that had been 
iven him as souvenirs of his dead friend Arch- 
ishop Tache, and in a letter of this date assures him 
e will continue to be "a faithful friend, a devoted 
lissionary, to aid you in my humble position to cany 
le burden which the}' have placed on you." Thus 
imply this venerable counsellor of bishops shipped 
ito liis place as adviser and trusted friend of the new 
ishop. 

All summer and autumn he spent at his Hermit- 
ge with occasional visits to ]Macleod and Calgary, 
''rom the latter place he writes on December 1st this 
athetic little note: 

"Just a word to tell you that it is very cold — and 
till colder. ]My kidnej'-trouble seems a little better, 
ut to offset that I have a frenzied cold in my head 
.'hich torments me cruelly — Look you, 7 am old." 

He was then but two months away from his 



374 FATHER LACOMBE 1898 

seventy-second birthday, and like most of the Oblates 
who had so generously worn themselves out in the 
painful and exacting mission work of the west, he 
had not escaped bodily ills. 

For close on to twenty years he had suffered from 
disorders of his kidneys and bladder, and at times 
he was seriously and painfully ill because of these 
ailments. Yet he was still obliged to do his share 
of parochial work. The influx of new settlers into 
the west calling for new parishes, together with the 
needs of the Indian missions and schools, made it 
almost impossible for the Bishop of St. Albert to 
release any man from his post. 

Added to his faiUng health is a rather constant 
care self-imposed by his work for the Metis at his 
colony. He had secured as resident superintendent 
Father Therien, a priest of admirable executive abil- 
ity and tact, but the latter had his hands well-filled 
with the administration of the colony and efforts to 
locate the unsettled and unlikely-to-settle Metis: he 
could give little time to help secure a revenue. 

The burden of financing consequently fell upon 
Father Lacombe alone. 

His friends had been very generous to his appeals 
for fxmds, but there was necessarily a great deal of 
money required by a plan that comprised a chapel, a 
residence, a boarding school, a flour and saw mill, 
implements, cattle and horses for the Metis and other 
assistance to them from time to time. 

The colony had now been formed three years and 



898 FATHER LACOMBE 875 

11 view of Uie aid already given the Government 
ent an official to make a full report upon the con- 
litions of the colony, its finances, and administra- 
ions : likewise with regard to the proposed school for 
I'hich Father Lacombe was then seeking assistance, 
jord Aberdeen commented in writing upon the Re- 
lort when submitted to him : 

"It is with much pleasure that I signed this Report, and I 
ike this opportunity of offering cordial good wishes for the 
access of the scheme which has been devised with so much 
arm-hearted earnestness and practical sagacity by my friend, 
'ather Lacombe." 

Mr. Ruttan's report is very favourable through- 
ut. "It is wonderful," he states in one place, "what 
as been done with so little money." 

Encouraged by Lord Aberdeen to seek further as- 
stance in the east Father Lacombe left Calgarj' 
)ward the end of 1898, and early in the following 
ear he reports to his friend at St. Albert generous 
ifts from Lord Strathcona, James Ross and others. 
L-part from these he found little practical sympathy 
)r the ISIetis, and his entire general collections 
mounted to only $1,000. 

On this visit to Ottawa Father Lacombe had met 
lady jMinto, the wife of the new Governor-General, 
id although he formed no deep friendship with this 
ce-regal pair as he had with his whole-hearted 
•iends, the Aberdeens, their relations would seem to 
ive been of a pleasant nature, for Lady Minto in 



376 FATHER LACOMBE 1899 

April conveys to him a portrait of Queen Victoria 
sent to Father Lacombe by the Queen with a letter 
from her daughter. 

This gracious remembrance was deeply pleasing to 
the loyal old missionary, who had frequently spoken 
to his Indians of the virtues and power of the great 
Queen Mother across the seas. It brought him, too, 
the renewal of a charming acquaintance with the i 
Abbe de Bie, then Abbot of Bornheim Abbey in Bel- 
gium, but in the early seventies secretary of Mon- 
signor Smeulders, the Papal Legate to Canada. 

This pleasant letter, written in French hke almost • 
aU of Father Lacombe's correspondence, reads : 

"Abbaye D13 BoENHEiM, May 11, 1899. 
"Rev. Father and Friend: 

"Voila, my dear Reverend Father, what a fit of jealousy - 
seizes me! I have just read in a Brussels daily: 'The Rev. 
Father Lacombe, the valiant missionary of the northwest, at 
present in Montreal working in the interests of his beloved 
missions has received from Queen Victoria the portrait of 
Her Majesty sent by herself and accompanied by a letter 
written by the Princess Beatrice, in which she says: "The 
Queen is deeply interested in what has been told her about 
Father Lacombe and has agreed with pleasure to your sug- 
gestion to send him her portrait. • . ." ' i 

" 'Tiens!' I said to myself, 'I am very glad that the Queen | 
of England feels such an interest in Father Lacombe and 
sends him her portrait, but how can she feel as much interest' 
in him as you, who lived some time with him in Montreal— 
you who have received from him so many marks of friend- 1. 
ship and fraternal affection?' 



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899 FATHER LACOMBE 87T 

"My project was quickly made — knowing you to be in 
rlontreal, I hasten to write you a little letter accompanying 
t, too, with my portrait as 3-our gracious Sovereign has done. 
Vithout doubt this will be much less honour for you (and if 
11 those who are interested in you should send you their por- 
raits you would have enough to decorate all the palaces of 
he Saskatchewan), but at least I hope that it will not be dis- 
greeable to hear a word again from your friend, the little 
ecretary of the late Monsignor Smeulders, the Apostolic 
)elegate to Canada. 

"D. Amedee de Bie." 



The movement of the gold-seekers north from Ed- 
lonton in 1898 — or, as it is known in western his- 
:)Ty, the year of the Klondyke rush — had not only 
rought Edmonton into the ej'es of the continent and 
iven it a first impulse toward becoming a great in- 
ind city — but it had brought the whole north coun- 
"y before the consideration of the Grovernment. 

Since a find of minerals was hable at any time to 
md a rush of other and more permanent settlers 
lere, it became necessarj^ for the Government to get 
)me control of the Crees, Chipe^^yans and Beavers in 
le Athabasca and Peace River countries. It was 
5nsequently decided to send a party of Commis- 
oners in there to bring these tribes into treaty re- 
itions Avith the Government. 

The committee of the Pri^-y Council appointed by 
lis Excellency to consider this matter reported on 
lay 3rd, 1899, that the Superintendent-General of 



878 FATHER L'ACOMBE 1891 

Indian Affairs had reason to believe there would b 
trouble in negotiating the Treaty with the Indians o 
Athabasca district and dealing with the claims of th( 
half-breeds, as the Indians were suspicious of Avhiti 
men entering their country and the Metis likely t( 
be dissatisfied with the measure of recognition giver 
to their claims. The Committee moreover wer( 
handicapped by the meagre knowledge that the De 
partment could furnish them concerning these In 
dians. . . . 

These considerations led the Committee to the be 
lief: 

"That it would be desirable if the Commissioners could havi 
the assistance and counsel of the Very Reverend Father La 
combe. Father Lacombe has been so long in the country ai 
a missionary, knows the Indians and half-breeds so intimatelj 
and possesses their confidence in so marked a degree that h( 
would be able to render most valuable and effective assistanc( 
to the Commissioners in their difficult mission." 

In view of this Report the Hon. Mr. Sifton, Minis 
ter of the Interior, called upon the old missionar\ 
and requested him to give his services to the Govern 
ment in this connection, to urge the Indians and half' 
breeds to make the Treaty peaceably. Although de 
cidedly pleased at the compliment conveyed by th( 
offer. Father Lacombe refused to go. 

"It is too much for me," he said to the Minister 
"I am too old to travel hundreds of miles in littlf 
boats, and I will only bother your people to take care 



1899 FATHER LACOMBE S79 

3f me if I fall sick. Try to find somebody else." 

"Xo, we want you," JNIr. Sifton persisted. "You 
tvill have everything at your disposal to make the trip 
comfortable." 

The Prime JNIinister also added lais persuasions. 

"Bien" Father Lacombe said finally, "Telegraph to 
Bishop Grandin. If he orders me to go, I will go." 

When the proposed Treaty was under discussion 
n the House of Commons in June of this year the 
Minister of the Interior said: 

"Along with this Commission we have asked the Reverend 
^'athcr Lacombe to go, not as a member of the Commission, 
)ut in an advisory capacity. Everyone who has lived in the 
Lorthwest for the last fifteen or twenty years, Protestant and 
Catholic, knows well that there is no man in the northwest 
ooked upon by the Indians with the same reverence and af- 
'ection as Father Lacombe." ' 

"Hear! Hear!" interjected Nicholas Flood 
Davin, the brilliant, genial member from Regina, 
lalling out from his seat on the Opposition benches. 

On ^lay 11, Father Lacombe wrote from JNIon- 
real to Bishop Legal — "I have decided to accept the 
)ffer of going on that Commission. Pray for your 
)ld missionary. It is finished. There is no more re- 
)ose for me. May the good Saviour have pity on 
ne!" Again he writes, "This is doubtless the last 
ervice I will render our Congregation and my coun- 
ry — As God wills!" 

1 Debates, H. of C, 1899, Vol. 1, p. 5691. 



380 FATHER LACOMBE 1899 

The party left Edmonton on May 29th, driving 
in heavy stage-waggons and escorted by eleven 
Mounted Police, among whom was Fitzgerald of 
heroic memory. At Athabasca Landing, then a tiny 
hamlet dotting the water-front, the party crossed the 
border-land into the wilderness. From here to the 
settlement on Lesser Slave Lake they travelled in 
open scows, tenting by night. 

Father Lacombe and the physician of the party 
shared one tent, the yomiger man always finely solic- 
itous for the comfort and health of his venerable com- 
panion. As the journey lengthened, however, 
Father Lacombe to his extreme delight found that 
his health was improving: he felt himself renewing 
the days of his prime, and again proclaimed the woods 
an anodyne. 

He had brought a light portable chapel with him, 
which was easily converted into an altar, and some 
mornings he celebrated Mass in his tent with Com- 
missioner McKenna as his acolyte and the half-breed 
trackers as a congregation. 

From Bishop Grouard of Fort Chipewyan, who 
was returning from Europe and had joined the party 
at the Landing, Ex-Governor Laird, President of 
the Commission, learned that June 13th would be the 
fiftieth anniversary of Father Lacombe's priesthood. 
The entire party, like a group of boys before Christ- 
mas, thereupon planned a celebration to surprise their 
old travelling companion. They succeeded: 

"It was on the eve of my feast that they did cele- 



1899 FATHER LACOMBE S81 

I brate it," he recalls. "That dear old man, the Gk)v- 
I ernor, he was at the bottom of it, I know. . . . 
! Well, that night at a fine open place where the Saul- 
; teau river meets the Little Slave — a fine place with 
j the green forests on each side — the Governor called 
I out the word to camp. It was early ; I was surprised 
I that we camp so early, for we were in a hurry to 
j meet the Indians as we promise. 
I "Wliile the rest — they pitched camp, I walked off 
with my breviary. When I came back I see every- 
thing in fine order — and a flag-pole up with a flag 
I flying. But I did not guess anj'ihing then. 
j "I was sittmg in my tent in a little while, look- 
ing out on the river — Oh, that was fine — poetique 
i — ^to look on! . . . And suddenly the Governor 
j he came to my tent and ask to come in. . . ." 

The whole party came behind Mr. Laird with an 
address and a poem inscribed on birch bark, and 
after the speeches a banquet was spread on the 
j grass. 

"Next morning the bishop and I said Mass, that 
igood old bishop serving mine. The door of the tent 
]was wide open, and many knelt on the grass out- 
jside. After ISIass we pitched our tents and started 
I for the Lake. . . . Ah, that was a pleasant day 
I — fifty years from the day the old Bishop Bourget 
lordained me for the missions of the west." 
i Reaching Lesser Slave Lake settlement ' on June 

1 Now named Grouard in honour of one of the most delightful of 
'ecclesiastics, the venerable Bishop of Athabasca. 



382 FATHER LACOMBE 1899 

19th, they found the Indians awaiting them in hun- 
dreds of tepees on the fine open meadow-lands. 

These Indians, among the most advanced in the 
north, entered into the Treaty wiUingly enough after 
much parleying by the Chiefs Moostoos and Kenoos- 
hayoo with Mr. Laird and Father Lacombe. The 
concluding speech was made by the old missionary 
who, notwithstanding his little contact with the 
Northern Crees, was known to several of these In- 
dians personally and to all of them by fame. On 
the following day the documents were signed and the 
annuity-payments began. 

The Metis had to be dealt with next and this 
proved a more difficult task. Their chief speaker 
declared that he and his people did not want the 
Government's money in exchange for their land : they 
wanted to be left undisturbed in their own country. 
This with much more in a disaffected strain was only 
a preliminary to their objection to non-negotiable 
script being paid them as the Government pro- 
posed. 

The intention this year was to make half-breed 
script non-transferable, to save the unwary half- 
breed from speculators. This was a condition that 
Father Lacombe together with other friends of the 
Metis had been particularly anxious should be at- 
tached, and he now made an ardent and impressive 
speech to the half-breeds urging them to safeguard 
their own and their children's interests by accepting 
it. He recalled with indignation the way in which 



1899 FATHER LACOMBE 383 

the half-breeds of the plains had been parted from 
their scrip lands by greedy and often unscrupulous 
I speculators. 

Here again the half-breeds clamoured for the right 
to do as they pleased with their scrip — to sell it or 
; not as they chose. They insisted upon this point be- 
I ing ceded; their alternative was a refusal to enter 
I into any negotiations with the Government. The 
I motley gathering of white traders and scrip-hunters 
. who had camped on their trail were perhaps not with- 
: out influence upon the half-breed leaders in main- 
I taining this attitude. 

That night a Council was held by tlae officials of 
the Treaty party and Father Lacombe, when it was 
regretfully decided that the scrip should be dis- 
! tributed in the old way with no conditions attached. 
j It was essential that there should be no failure to 
! negotiate with this insurgent group of jNIetis or they 
i would grow disaffected and rouse other Indians 
j against the Treaty. 

I In the House of Commons in 1900 fault being 
' found with the Government for this action, Sir Wil- 
' frid Laurier informed tlie House that when Com- 
jmissioner Laird and Father Lacombe found the half- 
I breeds would not take the new non-negotiable scrip 
I they had been obliged to issue the old form. "There 
lis no man," he added, "who has taken a stronger 
U'iew than Father Lacombe against the excesses re- 
! suiting from issuing scrip or who saw less benefit in 
its results to the half-breed. But in view of the de- 



SSi FATHER LACOMBE 1899 

temiined attitude of the half-breeds . . .'"no 
other course was open to them. 

With the treaty -making past the party pushed on 
to the north. Some days later Father Laeombe 
■wrote to his friend from, the banks of the Peace say- 
ing he had wanted to tell him about their journey 
on the ninety miles of Peace River Trail, but con- 
ctoded he had no words to describe it. The road 
was obstructed by stumps, by swamps, by creeks 
swollen with the rains — and "all this in the middle of 
a forest so black and high that we scarcely knew there 
was a sun. The rain went with us during the first 
fixe days. Clouds of mosquitoes and flies followed \js, 
fighting for more blood. . . ." 

These last were what he called the httle amiabil- 
ities of the journey. But he rather enjoyed the ex- 
perience on the whole, for — 

"ATI tliese difficulties of the voyage bring me back to mj 
old dajs — the superb airs, this battle with the elements, males 
loe forget that I cany with me serenty-two years, and per- 
suade me that I am not made for the luxuries of fine civiliza- 

On the sixth day the party emerged from the for- 
est-trail to the superb open landscape of Peace River 
Crossing, and in its tranquil beauty forgot their 
triab. Here again, and later at old Fort Dvmve 
gan the scenes of Lesser Slave Lake were repeated. 

At the Crossing as at the Lake Father Laeombe 
saw a prosperous mission — a farm, a church and a 



FATHEB LACOMBZ 385 



: - _■ ; i-iiiool where thirty years fae£o»e he Ind 
;.- a beautiful wilderness. In a letter wTitten. to 
j^ishop Legal he assores Mat — tiai wide iiie latter 
is probably supp&atmg: Hexroi £ar Ae wogagemrj, 
he may be easy in has mind abool: file old WBaat, as 
he would not escfaang^ his jonmey for all flie feasts 
of tlie greatest ^rnw hnneta lie knoKSL 'His jauper 
sjdieTe is still, he <Jsim3, at tiie end of lis dkjrs to 
be with the Tndi.ans and half-breeds. ... "It b 
so my destiny is written-" 

From the Crossing to Fort TermiEoii they con- 
tinued their journey 'm opoi sco«irsi» diiftiiig easily 
down stream by day and ni^bL It was pifasaitf 
trarelling.. but at night FaOier IiafDombe laiy amake 
"to watch the mountains, the trees, tiie rirer. To 
me they were like phantoms." 

From Fort Yermilinn the party Soated jipasanfly 
down in opoi scows between banks that had 
witnessed hot scesies of liraby in the old days of 
opposing^ fnr-coDapanies. After seTeral days ^le 
entrance to Lake AthahasBa iias leadied. The 
boatmen planned to can^ hoe for the ni^A, as the 
wind was Tery high: bat across the nect oS tiie lake 
the traTellers could see the white sides a£ Fort Ciiipe- 
wyan gleaming like gypscoa waDs in the moranihigjht, 
and on the shore a hogh ^MM^fi*** had been fit to greet 
than. 

It beckoned warmly, and ConmussianeTS and half- 
breeds alike said — "We will go!" 

A small fire was lit in the prow of the .ead- 



386 FATHER LACOMBE 1899 

ing scow, and all were pulled out from the still silver 
current of the Quatres-Fourches, leaping ahead to 
hospitable old Chipewyan. 

"It was witching that night, when we reached the 
mission at eleven o'clock," Father Lacombe wrote 
to his friend. 

As the boats beached at the mission landing- 
place the entire population of the mission-colony was 
grouped about a large bonfire on the shore, while the 
banks behind overflowed with hundreds of the 
Christian Indians of the Chipewyan tribe. They had 
assembled for the Treaty, but for the moment were 
intent only on welcoming home Bishop Grouard, the 
gentle prelate who had grown wliite in their service. 



XVi 

Father Lacombe found Chipewyan rich in asso- 
ciations of Mackenzie and Simpson and Franklin and 
many another of the north's great explorers and 
traders. This Fort had been made the Athabasca 
headquarters in the days of warfare and loot among 
the rival fur-companies, and was consequently over 
a century old. 

The INIaster of the Post extended to the travellers 
the traditional welcome of the Gentlemen Adven- 
turers. There was an atmosphere of the Past cling- 
ing to the place: clerks moved leisurely about their 
duties; train-dogs swarmed within the quadrangle; 
the bell for rations swung near the main gate. But 
the bastions, the guns and sentinel tower were gone; 
tlie gTeat gates no longer clanged shut at night — ■ 
and no sentry kept watch from the tower or paced 
a gallerj' witliin the palisade. 

When free from his duties with the treaty party 
Father Lacombe spent his time at the Mission, 
eagerly absorbing tales of his brethren — Grouard 
and Faraud. The mission had been established by 
Tache in 1848 and the field had proved as full of 
privations as of interest. But since the days of 
387 



388 FATHER LACOMBE 189! 

Alexander Mackenzie the very austerity of the rocb 
place seemed to have endeared it to men who wer 
strong-hearted enough to live there. 

The treaty party now proceeded up the Athabascj 
to Fort McMurray by the Company's steamer Gra 
hame, which was crowded with returning gold-seek 
ers. All along their route the Commissioners hac 
met small parties of these disconsolate mortals home 
ward bound: they heard of others who had set ou 
over "the Trail of Death" — the overland route fron 
Edmonton through the Swan Hills — and who woulc 
never return. 

Here on the Graham they felt overwhelmed witl 
the tales of disaster from men who had pushed pasi 
the Mounted Police pickets the previous year, car 
tain that they were on the rosy way to Fortune. 

On the Fort McMurray meadows at the base ol 
a spruce-covered moimt the Indian bands, mixed Crec 
and Chipewyan, were encamped. These were alsc 
brought into harmonious conformity with Canadiar 
institutions by means of the usual ceremony and pay- 
ments. 

The tents of the Commissioners were pitched or 
the meadows beside the trading-post. One night a 
furious storm of wind and rain came on: the wind 
picked Father Lacombe's tent up from its fastenings 
and left him exposed to the downpour. Hastily col- 
lecting his blankets and effects he ran for shelter tc 
another tent, and notwithstanding his age felt no ill- 
effects from the drenching. 



899 FATHER LACOMBE 389 

From McMurray the party spent several days 
ravelling in open scows drawn through the rapids 
y traclvmen, and early in September they arrived in 
Edmonton. 

Treaty 'No. 8 had become a matter of history. 

Father Lacombe announced his return in a letter 
f September 8th. He was well — not even fatigued; 
nd he comments gaily: 

" They cannot kill me — neither bishops nor Gov- 
rnments." 

Shortly after his return to civilization Father La- 
ambe received a letter from the north that brought 
im again into relations with the Indians of tlie North 
'ountry. 

Father Falher WTote reminding him that three In- 
ians, accused of murder and taken out from Lesser 
lave Lake shortly after the arrival of the treaty 
arty there, were now in prison at Edmonton or Fort 
askatchewan. 

They had been snatched up out of their tei)ees 
nd "woods to be deposited between the bars and 
mbers of a JNIounted Police guard-room hundreds 
f miles away. They had scarcely understood there 
as a white man's law, until they found themselves 
ke animals in a cage, dumbly wondering at the cause 
t' their own misery. 

The northern priest recalled the circumstances of 
le case and begged Father Lacombe in the name 
f all the Crees of that district to secure some leniency 
)r these men by explaining to the whites the old be- 



390 FATHER LACOMBE 1899 

lief of the Crees concerning the Witigo. The cir- 
cumstances were unusual. 

The Pheasant, a Lesser Slave Lake Indian, had 
suddenly lost his reason and run amuck in the camp 
threatening to kill and eat whoever crossed his path, 
Tliis had happened before — and the Crees held the 
old tribal belief that this man was possessed of a can- 
nibal spirit wliich prompted him to destroy his own 
kind. They first tried traditional remedies, by im- 
mersing him in boihng water and in other ways en- 
deavouring to melt the icy spirit possessing him — 
but the Witigo persisted in his madness and his 
threats. 

Then solemnly as for an execution they prepared 
to kill The Pheasant. One struck him with his axe; 
as The Pheasant dashed away another fell on him, 
then another — and when dead they cut him open to let 
the Evil Spirit escape. This done they returned 
calmly to their daily life, the tribe feeling free to 
breathe again with the man-killer dead. 

Father Falher reminded Father Lacombe of liis 
own knowledge of similar cases before the Crees were 
Christianized. He noted further that the first axe- 
stroke was inflicted on The Pheasant by a man who 
had only been converted from paganism two years 
earlier. The letter was eloquent in its very simj)lic- 
ity: 

"I address myself to you, my dear Father, because I 
know that you love our Indians. . . . For my part I 
love them only the more when I see them in trouble. 



m FATHER LACOMBE 391 

"I would have you go and visit them tliat you may console 
em a little, and even defend them if possible, pleading the 
tenuating circumstances of the case. You especially who 
iderstand the Indian and his superstitions can easily explain 
is to the whites, who would not otherwise be able to under- 
ind the case they arc going to judge." 

Father Lacombe made the visits as requested to 
e unfortunate Crees, consoled them in their cells, 
ok up their case with tlie authorities, and had the 
tisf action of seeing all three released after their trial, 
hey returned ver}' gladly to their homes and since 
en have been exemplary Indians, carefully avoid- 
g collision with the Police and the white man's 
ws. 

The fiftieth anniversarj- of his priesthood had been 
lebrated on the banks of the Little Slave River, 
it his friends would not let that suffice. Conse- 
lently on September 25 St. Albert was en fete in 
)nour of its founder. Bishop Grandin and his 
ladjutor had planned a celebration worthy of the 
d missionary. 

Indians and half-breeds came long distances to 
imp about the Cathedral and assist at this triumph 
■ their old friend. Priests gathered from every por- 
on of the diocese ; Archbishop Langevin and Bishop 
lontenwill, the brilliant young incumbent of New 
Westminster, had come to honour the jubilarian. 

There was a solemn religious sen-ice, followed by 

banquet and on the concluding night a shower of 
reworks was employed to delight the Indian visitors. 



392 FATHER LACOMBE 1899 

The memorable feature of the celebration was a toast 
proposed to the Man-of-the-Beautiful-Mind, the 
Man-of-the-Good-Heart — Albert Lacombe — by hii 
old comrade-in-arms, the Bishop of St. Albert. 

It was during this address that Father Lacombe 
received the name by which he is now known to his 
friends on two continents — ^the Datur-omnibus. 

The Bishop, who was as visibly happy in the cele- 
bration as his guest of honour, rose to propose the 
toast : 

"When I was at Rome," he said, "in 1869 we met 
there a vehicle on which was written these words: 
Datur-omnibus. I enquired the meaning of the in- 
scription, and was told that this carriage wended its 
way from end to end of Rome wherever trouble was; 
and if anyone, innocent or guilt}-, was pursued or 
in danger he could take refuge there. 

"The driver was instructed to take the refugee 
to some safe place, where he might await in peace 
the decision upon his case. This was a custom years 
ago, when the Pope was King of Rome. 

"Eh, bien, let me apply tbe phrase to our dear 
Father Lacombe — Datur-omnibus.' It is thirty- 
eight years since he came here accompanying the 
lamented Archbishop Tache. The latter man^elling 
at the beauty of the site decided to establish a mLssion 
on this hill and dedicated it to the patron-saint of 
Father Lacombe. 

"And he, who is still with us, set himself to this 
new task laving the foundations of the mission which 



1899 FATHER LACOMBE S9^ 

has flourished so remarkably, and is now even an 
episcopal see. 

'"He has not only worked for this diocese, but for 
the whole ecclesiastical pro\-ince of St. Boniface. 
Had anyone need of an intermediary — one to deal 
with the Govenmient or the Canadian Pacific Com- 
pany, or a man for any other important mission — they 
asked me for Father Lacombe. . . . 

"3Iore than once I have heard this comment, "How 
is it that Father Lacombe is not a Bishop f 

"This thing, my friends seems to me verv easy 
to understand. Apart from the fact that those who 
are deserWng of the office cannot all be bishops — or 
we would all be bishops here — it must not be for- 
gotten that the Creator forms special men for special 
missions. The Bishop is charged with the adminis- 
tration of one portion of the Church — or, it" you wish, 
a particular Church to which he must devote himself 
entirely. 

"But Father Lacombe has been in some sense the 
universal man — Datur-omnibtis. If he had been a 
bishop he could not have been this; he coiUd not for 
instance have performed for the Government the serv- 
ice which it requested of him quite recently in going 
to facilitate the proceedings of a treaty which it de- 
sired to make with the 3Ietis and Indians of the Peace 
and Athabasca Rivers — without mentioning the 
numerous other missions which he has accomplished 
during his fifbi- years of priesthood in Manitoba, in 
the Xorthwest and, I may say, in all Canada. 



394 FATHER LACOMBE 1899 

"God, who directs all with wisdom, has willed that 
he should be free, that he should lend himself to all 
and for all. Datur-omnibusr 

The remainder of the year 1899 was spent by 
Father Laeombe in Southern Alberta, with brief 
visits to Edmonton and Hobbema. He was invited 
to the latter point by the Indians themselves to settle 
difficulties concerning the schools. A few days ear- 
lier he had been summoned by telegraph to the Piegan 
Reserve, where the dissatisfied Indians were raising a 
disturbance about the size of their rations. 

He feels himself the shuttle-cock of circumstances, 
and he rebels against it to Bishop Legal : 

"If this continues, when shall I ever have repose 
or tranquillity? And they want me to write my 
Memoirs! . . . Don't you consider this a farce?" 

Nevertheless his sense of obedience, which as cer- 
tainly as his genuine piety underlay the little vanities 
of his words and the activities of his latter days — 
urged him to attempt the Memoirs. On November 
12, in the little rambling rectory at Calgary which 
had grown room by room around the original log- 
cabin, we find him arranging one apartment "with 
light and quiet," in which to write his Memoirs. 

He plans these in the form of letters to his bene- 
factors M. and Mdme. Forest; but because of his 
advancing years, no less than the fear that it was 
then too late to acquire the writer's metier, he was 
very unwilling to undertake the work. He was also 
reluctant to turn himself away from humanity and 



1899 FATHER LACOMBE 395 

its irresistible appeals, and bury himself in a room 
Avith dead paper and ink — 
On December 4th, he writes: 

"At last I have begun to write my Memoirs. That ap- 
pears absurd to me. But, 'One obeys or one does not obey' 
. . . Then I obey. That in itself is something." 

He sets himself to work now with what will he 
can call up, and the result of the next two months 
and stray moments in the next year or two resulted in 
filling five or six notebooks with a mass of formal 
discursive writing. This contained a brief and in- 
comj^lete outline of his life up to 1864, and is blended 
with numerous lengthy reflections of a pious 
nature. 

With the terror of producing a book always hang- 
ing over him he dropped the charmingly natural 
style of his letters. Here and there his broken nar- 
rative lightens to a fine bit of descriptive writing — 
and these portions have been quoted in the earlier 
part of this work. 

Father Lacombe did not give undivided attention 
to his uncongenial task, however; his letters to Bishop 
Legal now are filled mth plans and suggestions con- 
cerning diocesan affairs and the half-breed colony at 
St. Paul. The attempt at concentration upon his 
early days and labours apparently only spurred him 
to renewed activity upon what still remains to be 
done. 

"I perceive," he declares ^ith imconscious naivete. 



396 FATHER LACOMBE 1900 

"that in writing these Memoirs I find a grand op- 
portunity of forming new plans." 

But he is not left alone with his memories. His 
friends in Eastern Canada availed themselves of the 
Christmas season to send him presents for his Jubilee 
year: presents, which like everything else detachable 
that his long life had brought him, were speedily dis- 
tributed among the different missions. 

"In Prussia," he writes to his friend, "there are Bishops 
who are princes because of their episcopal position. In our 
northwest there are Cures who are princes, because of the 
kind favor of circumstances." 

He might have said — Cures who are princes be- 
cause of their unique and royal personality. 

A year earlier Father Lacombe had written of his 
position as adviser to the treaty commission: "It 
will be the last service I shall render my Order or my 
country. As God wills." 

He could now add a postscript to that; another 
mission was beckoning to him. 

This had to do with the newest Canadians, the in- 
rushing tide of European peasant settlers drawn by 
the free farms of the west. Of these the Ruthenians 
probably outnumbered any other nationality. They 
were a good thrifty class of Slavs, whose industry on 
northwest homesteads recommended them as future 
citizens. 

Practically all of these were Greek Catholics in 
full adherence to Rome and the Pontiff there, al- 



900 FATHER LACOMBE S97 

hough in the form of their ceremonials they followed 
he Ruthenian rite and their services were conducted 
1 their own language. They consequently found 
hemselves in a countiy without spiritual directors 
f their own language and rite, suddenly transplanted 
rom the surveillance of a too-paternal feudal Govern- 
fient to a new land of few restraints — to freedom in 
uch large measure that it was intoxicating and apt to 
le unwisely used. The transplanted Slavs were now 
[lore than ever in need of moral guidance. 

Prosletysing forces at work in their ranks were 
iroducing a religious indiflference and scepticism 
t'hich Father Lacombe and his confreres viewed with 
idignation and alarm. It was felt that an appeal 
or Ruthenian Catholic priests and funds to support 
hem must be made to Rome and to Austria. Father 
jacombe in accordance with his mission of Datur- 
innibus was selected as the most suitable ambassador. 

So the opening of the Twentieth century finds 
he aged hermit of the foothills still pursuing medi- 
ations chosen a decade earher to fit him for the next 
lorld — but w^eighing them as he waited in ante- 
hambers of the Papal and Austrian courts, and amid 
, whirl of journeying that brought him from France 
o Italy — to Germany, Austria, Belgium and back 
gain to France. 

He sailed from Hahfax on INIarch 29, and on 
faster Monday was at Viarmes where three Cures 
pent the evening with him and, he said, made him 
alk so much that he was utterly fatigued and had 



398 FATHER LACOMBE 1900 

an attack of indigestion from it. This is the only 
indication in any of his letters of how great a tax was 
made upon his nervous force by the hours of causerie 
which his European acquaintances demanded. 

In one of his Paris letters there is a living breath 
from the tomb of Tarte, that brilliant likeable but 
whimsical political genius, who bequeathed to the Ca- 
nadian world of politics the "Business is business" 
maxim — as well as the frank epigram — "Elections 
are not won by prayers alone." 

On April 29th Father Lacombe dined at the 
residence of the Austrian Commissioner with the Hon. 
Mr. Tarte, who was then Canada's representative at 
the Paris Exposition. Tarte was on the point of 
leaving for London to attend a banquet to be pre- 
sided over by the Prince of Wales, and which had 
been arranged in connection with the Colonial con- 
tingents supplied for the Boer War. 

"Poor Tarte," his fellow-Canadian comments in one let- 
ter, "how is he going to draw himself out of the embarrassing 
position, since he must speak — he who was so opposed in Can- 
ada to the sending of the troops. He only said when I made 
these remarks to him: 'Wait, I am going to play with those 
Englishmen.' " 

"I feel rather indisposed," he jots in his diary at 
Rome on June 15. "The extreme heat has begun 
— but bon courage! — for the old man!" 

Only once during the entire trip does the note- 
book record a restful day: "Je me repose" is all 
he writes that day. 



1900 FATHER LACOMBE 399 

Cardinal Satolli and his colleagues, Rampolla 
Ledochowski and Orelia, were in turn besieged by the 
venerable Canadiaii i)ilgrini anxious to forward with 
them Iiis plea for the Ruthenian Catholics in Canada. 

In July he was back in Paris and Brittany. 
Whilst in Paris he was actively at work helping the 
young Canadian colony there to secure a ciiapel. 
Thence his itinerary' led him to Anvers and Brussels 
on matters pertaining to Belgium emigration to 
Canada — to Cologne, Hunfeld and Munich — every- 
where delivering lectures to colleges of students or 
priests, always seeking new recruits for the missions, 
new funds for their upkeep. 

His letters of this period contain numerous 
snatches of Latin, owing to the fact that this was 
his one means of conversing with many of his hosts 
in Austria and Gennany. His other lingual accom- 
I)lishments — his French and Cree, Saulteau and 
Blackfoot, and what he calls his "good English of 
the Xor'-West" — avail him nothing. 

One letter tells its own story of little economies. 
His journey — pending a decision from Rome upon 
the Austrian enterprise — had been unexpectedly 
prolonged, and his funds are limited. He writes to 
Bishop Legal: 

"To make the most of my purse I travel third ciass and I 
eat crusts. The third class cars are not as uncomfortable 
as they were some years ago. . . . Do not be afraid for 
my travelling expenses. That is my affair. I shall man- 
age, as always in the past, so that neither you nor any one 



400 FATHER LACOMBE 1900 

of the others will have anything to pay until my return to 
St. Albert." 

He evidently finds the means to travel further, for 
his next letter under date of September 9th, is from 
a Franciscan monastery at Vienna: 

"What are you thinking as you look on the address of this 
letter.'' How much I have to tell you, and through you to 
our venerable Bishop and missionaries. Truly I do not know 
where to begin — I have been busy with so many things. But 
now, the old missionary in Austria! . . . It is very true 
that I devour distances, as you say. ... I intend to see 
the Emperor and the Premier. What audacity on my part! 
I speak Latin like a tutor, when they do not under- 
stand me otherwise. . . ." 

After a lengthy postscript concerning his plans 
of work and travel he concludes archly — 

"Enfin, is this not enough for to-day? I kiss your hand 
— that is the fashion here. What a country ! What peo- 
ple! A. L." 

He has at last reached the Austrian government, 
and is endeavouring to have their co-operation in his 
mission to Europe. He had several interviews with 
the Premier, M. Golowkowski, whom he described 
as "a handsome amiable man who spoke French, and 
in whose office I feel perfectly at home." 

He assures Bishop Legal that since he has come 
in direct communication with the Government — "I 
am as much at ease with them as I am with my own 



1900 FATHER LACO.MBE 401 

at Ottawa." . . . "The ministers and deputies," 
he writes, "all speak French. 

"The Minister of Foreign Affairs, a Pole, has been very 
amiable and interests himself greatly in our question of Ru- 
thenians and Gallicians." 

He now decided to make a personal visit to the 
Province of Galicia from which the Ruthenians had 
emigrated. The Austrian Government, which 
through its ambassador at Rome had been interested 
in Father Lacombe and his mission, defrayed the 
expenses of his journey; likewise those of the ^lother 
Provincial of the Franciscan Xuns and a companion- 
sister. 

Tlie former, a brilliant and zealous woman and a 
member of one of the leading families of Austria, 
had promised Father Lacombe to secure in Galicia 
several nuns for orphanages in Canada. She was 
also to act as his interpreter and, to some degree by 
her family influence, as his advocate. 

He departed for Lemberg, armed with letters to 
the Galician government and Bishop Szeptickyi of 
Stanislaus, the latter a warm personal friend of the 
Pope. At Leopoh, Stanislaus, Pryzenyls he was al- 
ways the guest of his brethren, the Ruthenian ec- 
clesiastics, and most cordially welcomed by them. 

He made the best possible use of his time and ojipor- 
tunities, and returned from his mission successful in 
everything he sought. 



XVI 

On his return to Vienna Father Lacombe re- 
ceived a command to the Court. The impressively 
large packet containing the invitation was addressed 
to the 

Rev. Ai^ertus Lacombe, 

Vicar-General of Canada. 

In it His Majesty the Emperor summoned the 
old missionary to an audience on the following morn- 
ing. 

Father Lacombe was then the guest of the Countess 
Melanie Zichy (nee Princesse Metternich), His 
hostess thoughtfully prepared him for possible disap- 
pointment in his audience. 

"You will see in our Emperor a man of sorrows," 
she told him. "It is written in his face. He never 
laughs and rarely talks. The mile-stones of his Ufa 
have been made of grief — ^the last was the assassina- 
tion of his wife, the Empress." 

The next morning, when the carriage came around 
to convey him to the Imperial Palace the Countess 
with filial tenderness looked the old missionary over 
with anxious eyes to see that he was fittingly garbed 
to me«t the Emperor. The scrutiny was satisfactory. 
Even then at seventy-four the habitual and rather 
402 



300 FATHER LACOMBE 403 

otable neatness of the old priest had not deserted 
im. 

But a thought suddenly and very naturally flashed 
) the mind of a lady of the court. . . . "This 
Id Canadian priest is distinguished in his Canada. 
-Where are his decorations?" She voiced her solici- 
ide. 

The old priest smiled. ... In Canada who 
ad ever thought of conferring orders or decorations 
pon an old missionar}' ? 

Then flashing suddenly from gay to wistful — as 
as his wont — he pulled the wooden and brass cross 
F the Oblate Order from his sash. It was the 
■ucifix with which he had times innumerable blessed 
is Indian proteges. It was the same he had upheld 
) invoke peace that memorable dawn between the 
arring Crees and Blackfeet: 

"Hah!" he said smiling gravely, "with this I have 
een decorated for fifty years. It is my only decora- 
on." 

The Countess smiled through tears. Then — 

"Go," she said reverentlj' — tenderly. "You could 
ot have a higher." 

He arrived at the Palace. His quick eyes took 
1 all its magnificence and transmitted vivid impres- 
ons to his open mind. It was more superb than 
nything he had ever seen before — rich with a splen- 
our that he felt should only be lavished upon a House 
f God. It was magnificent — this palace of an un- 
appy line of Kings. 



404) FATHER LACOMBE 1900 

"The guards, the gilded chambers!" he exclaims 
in his diary — and stops there. 

Through many rich corridors and between stately 
functionaries he passed to reach the audience-room, 
entering this alone. 

He found the Emperor there — a stately old man 
with light brown hair silvering, with a mouth and 
beard like the men of the House of Hapsburg and 
with indescribably sad eyes. The figure of the man 
fixed then on Father Lacombe's sensitive mind so 
excited his sympathies that in speaking of it after- 
ward his voice always gravened: 

"The Countess told me he was a man of sorrows 
— I understood that when I saw him." 

The little old Canadian priest, whose one deco- 
ration was his worn crucifix, bowed his silvered head 
and bent shoulders before the Emperor; then told 
him of his mission in seeking aid for his Ruthenian 
brethren, funds to build chapels and priests to minis- 
ter in them to retain these people in their Ancient 
Faith. He answered the Hapsburg's questions 
about the welfare of his former subjects, about the 
Government and the Church hierarchy to which they 
were now allied. 

But the splendour, the coldness and formality of 
the interview numbed the man of the Plains. The 
Countess had done well to prepare him. 

Throughout the audience the Emperor remained 
standing; always grave and cold and courteous. 
The rich and original personality of the Canadian 



900 FATHER LACOMBE 405 

!iat had so charmed his INIinisters was without in- 
;rest to him. Had not most things lost their con- 
ern for hun? 

Their discourse never unbent to the charming 
auserie otliers enjoyed in contact with Fatlier La- 
3mbe. The Emperor was not seeking thrills of 
uman interest : his Old ]Man of the Sea forbade that. 

The conversation died of inanition: Father La- 
3mbe bowed himself from the audience-chamber, 
:ruck to his soul with pitj^ for the man within — 
lad in every fibre of his warm old heart that he 
as not the Emperor of Austria. 

His last daj-s on the continent were busily oc- 
apied. At the Neuf -Chateau, Luxembourg, he ad- 
ressed a large assemblage; in Paris he bought a 
lagic lantern with sUdes illustrating the Bible his- 
)rj' and catecliism. Numerous small commissions 
ere performed for his brethren, and by the middle 
F October he arrived in London in the midst of a 
)g, which he describes as night at midday. 

Here he was entertained by Lord jMountstephen ; 
id the quondam pastor of St. !Mary's, Calgarj', with 
le ex-President of the C. P. R., smiled to recall the 
rama of their exchange of office that day by the 
ow when both were younger. The Comte de 
assano and his wife brought their interesting old 
•iend again to their home for their own and his en- 
jvment. 

On October 29th he ^^•itnessed the arrival of the 
)ldiers from Africa. A splendid procession he felt 



406 FATHER LACOMBE 1901 

it was, though he was not a little amused to find the 
staid English "losing their heads on this occasion!" 
But back of the glory, the drums, the bonfires and 
acclamations, the eyes of the old man were wet with 
pity at "the disorder of hell in the streets, and the 
shame and sadness of the sight of drunken women 
and their companions." 

A pleasant note of invitation from Lady Aber- 
deen, whom he still addressed as "ma grande 
cousine" or "my sister," brought him to meet the 
former Governor-General and his wife at their to^vn- 
house on Grosvenor Street on October 27th. 

With their customary sympathy this genial pair 
heard Lhe old man's plaints of his sadly-interrupted 
Hermitage, and in half -jest — ^whole-earnest — offered 
him the hospitality of their Scotch estate, where he 
might find a little nook sufficiently retired from the 
world to end his days in a manner quite convenable 
and to his ideal. 

But while his soul still inhabited his restless, en- 
ergetic house of fire and clay he knew there could 
be no place of abode for him but the wide West. 



January, 1901, found him back at St. Mary's busy 
with routine parochial duties and especial care for 
the Metis who hung about the poorer quarters of 
the town. 

"Me voila encore lance dans une foule d'affaires!" 







^ o 



I 



1901 FATHER LACOMBE 407 

he writes on the 21st to Bishop Legal, and one catches 
in this a note of triumph that he is still capable of 
being a man of affairs. All is not a bed of roses 
for him, however: alcoholism and its consequences 
have brought too many of his Metis to the to^\Ti-gaol 
and into evil ways generally. 

"Pauvre Metis!" he ^\Tites in the same letter. 
"How it hurts me to see them so demoralized. . . 
But I will move heaven and earth to redeem them." 

In another letter tliis month there is a quaint 
flavour of the old days of toil and hardships he had 
known — of the log huts and earthen floors and parch- 
ment windows. . . . He complains that a new 
and energetic Cure of one to^vn parish is painting 
the exterior of his outbuildings! 

His old heart is indignant at the extravagance, 
when the diocese has so many poor missions where 
men need even the necessaries of life. Father La- 
combe was still onlj" twentj' years away from the 
mud-chinked hut at ^lacleod. 

The diocesan strong-box gaped in emptiness; 
Father Lacombe in his anxieties turned again to 
good friends in the East. From one he received this 
reply: 

"MoNTHEAL, 19th May, 1901. 
"Dear Father Lacombe: 

"I have been running about everywhere and have not until 
now had an opportunity to replj' to your letters of the 19th 
and 26th April. I am sorry to learn that you are in debt. 



408 FATHER LACOMBE 1901 

I suppose it worries you because you are not used to it as I 
am. I am nearly always in debt. It is the creditors who 
should be unhappy, not you. However since you are not 
used to it, I send you a small cheque towards helping you 
out. . . ." 

With this charming note the genial President of 
the Canadian Pacific had enclosed a handsome 
cheque. 

This spring Father Lacombe wrote to Bishop 
Grandin about Bishop Legal's desire that he should 
take charge of Macleod and a couple of outlying 
missions. — "The wishes of mj^ Superiors have always 
been orders to me," the imperious old man writes 
— oblivious of how often he has dictated the wishes 
of his Superiors. He adds a slight grumble that 
just as he had felt himself "seated at my fireside — 
I find it necessary to make my bundle again." 

He ends by accepting the responsibility, for in- 
deed there is no other priest free to take it. But 
on May 27, again a wanderer from his fireside, Father 
Lacombe writes airily from New Westminster, pooh- 
poohing the idea of Archbishop Langevin that he 
must now be bound for Australia — seeking a new 
continent to conquer as a beggar for his beloved 
missions. 

On his return to Calgary Father Lacombe decided 
to accept the invitation of his old friend, Archbishop 
Ireland, to attend the golden jubilee of the diocese 
of St. Paul. Father Lacombe had associations with 
St. Paul for more than fifty years: he had known 



1901 FATHER LACOMBE 409 

Bishop Loras and the gentle Ravoux. He had oc- 
cupied the latter's coffin-bed and spent the first 
month of his priestly ministry there. He felt he 
must attend the Jubilee. 

Meanwhile the financial affairs of the diocese, which 
had been going from bad to worse, had now reached 
a crisis of tenuity. Father Leduc, the diocesan 
bursar, investigating conditions, finds that with the 
best possible management all the means at their dis- 
posal for the next twelve months can only meet the 
needs of two. 

Father Lacombe, becoming aware of this, con- 
cluded that nothing remained but for him to take 
up the unenviable role of beggar and go east with 
his hands outstretched again. 

In August he is in ^Montreal with Father Therien, 
the supervisor of his JNIetis colony. He writes that 
he is preparing a grand campaign. Even if he comes 
as a beggar he does not intend to appear without the 
eclat he now craves more with each year that comes 
to burden him. Perhaps his failing vigour requires 
the eclat as a stimulant. He has at least beg-un to 
show his age very clearly in his shrinking muscles 
and tired steps. He no longer has the shoulders of 
an ox or the old unflagging energy. 

The campaign opened with an appeal published in 
the French papers throughout Quebec. In this he 
recalled the fine unselfish part Quebec had plaj-ed in 
the earliest days of the western missions. He 
quoted Pope Leo's words to himself the previous year, 



410 FATHER L'ACOMBE 1901 

when in an audience he deplored the diminution of 
the mission-funds from France; and the Pope had 
said — 

"Let New France support these missions." 
Finally Father Lacombe quoted his own stimulant 
— ^the farewell words of his old protector in 1849: 
"If God is with you, who can be against you?" 
So again the old missionary had thrown his soul 
into his work. The immediate results of his appeal 
were sufficiently gratifying, and he writes com- 
placently to Bishop Legal: 

"You will see in the newspapers of to-day my grand coup, 
my appeal — C'est serieux. . . . Ex-Governor Royal has 
just been here. He declared to me that he had not believed 
I could make a genuine coup d'etat. Excuse his naivete: but 
it is the kind Saviour and your prayers that have given me 
this strength and ability." 

Like a capable generalissimo, he adapts himself to 
modern and urban conditions in his campaign. He 
cannot attract or hold the attention of people here, 
as he did on the Plains, by riding out around the 
camps on a caynse, holding aloft his Red Cross flag 
and chanting the Indian crier's — "Oyez! Oyez!" 

Instead he selects a daily paper, which in return 
for securing news of his work at first hand promises 
to keep his campaign before the pubhc in an efficient 
manner. It evidently was La Presse, for when his 
work was half through he writes : "Le Journal is my 
organ at present, as I have parted company with 



1901 FATHER LACOMBE 411 

La Presse. They had become too exacting, always 
wanting the prime of my news." 

His force of two he soon found inadequate, and 
he urges Bishop Legal to join him. His work will 
he greatly strengihened by this relief corps, he 
states. — "Allans, Monseigneur de Pogla!" he en- 
treats. 

"C'est serieux; still it must be done," he -OTites later. 
"There must be no more flinching. But prepare 
yourself — it is a verj' hard trade." And therewith he 
assigns his Bishop to an assault upon the large cities, 
Avhile he and Father Therien, and possibly Father 
Roj'er, sweep thi-ough the country. 

In letter after letter he continues his persuasions, 
but fruitlessly. The coadjutor could work like a 
navA^y at home; he could live half -nourished on the 
fare of his poorest Indian missions and cheerfully 
share his last dried meat "svith a starving Indian — 
but he could not easily make up his mind to beg; 
there were too manj^ humiliations in the trade. 

Father Lacombe sends liim $650. It is his earliest 
har^'est, and he hopes the sight of it will be an in- 
ducement to "Monseigneur de Pogla." 

One Sunday he personally distributed his printed 
appeal to a congregation in church, and then writes 
: — "Am I not audacious? But they pardon me be- 
cause of my white hair"; and again — "Everywhere 
I am received almost like a Bishop, in partibus in- 
fidelitim. It is fabulous." 

By November 20th he and his assistants have trans- 



412 FATHER LACOMBE 1901 

mitted $2000 to Father Leduc "to begin to fill up 
the Gulf of St. Albert." 

In October Father Lacombe was joined by Bishop 
Legal, and he would have been happy then but for 
the miserable attacks of a Quebec journalist. The 
latter brought forward the charge that Father 
Lacombe and the other western missionaries ad- 
ministered their finances badly, and that the money 
being so laboriously collected from Quebec parishes 
would be wasted in useless works for undeserving half- 
breeds already beyond reclamation. He also ques- 
tioned Father Lacombe's authority to beg. 

The attacks upon Father Lacombe and his work 
only ceased after November 27, when Bishop Legal 
called in person upon the journalist and with other 
arguments presented him with Bishop Grandin's let- 
ter to the bishops of Quebec, stating that the col- 
lections made by Father Lacombe on his authority 
were to be appropriated to the general needs of St. 
Albert diocese. 

To Bishop Grandin his old comrade vsrrote: 

"Thank you again in behalf of us all for the beautiful let- 
ter, in which you defend us so fraternally against crooked 
minds like this — — . You tell me I must treat him 
gently. No. ... I will not spare him, and I do this 
in the interest of our good cause. He is a creature who must 
necessarily be exposed. He is filled with pride and self-love, 
notwithstanding his fallacious pretext of being the defender 
of the Truth. Let him not attack me any more, this rascal. 
I am watching for him." 



1902 FATHER LACOMBE 413 

Which goes to show that the great-hearted Datur- 
omnihus could still cherish a very human resentment 
on occasions and deliver a deserved reprimand as 
energetically as ever an old chief of the Plains lashed 
with his scorn an insolent young brave. 

Early in February, 1902, Bishop Legal was re- 
called to St. Albert by the serious illness of Bishop 
Grandin. On Februarj' 13th Father Lacombe 
wrote him: 

"I take no recreation with my brethren. . . . Tell 
him if he still lives, my venerable friend and Bishop, how my 
heart is grieved because I am not with him. He knows how 
I cherish him and will cherish him to the end. But notwith- 
standing your invitations the greatest proof of my devotion 
will be to stay here, working for the good of the diocese of 
St. Albert. At least that is what I think in my heart of an 
old missionary. 

"But — ah, my God, how sad I feel! Dear Bishop Grandin! 
Is he then going.'' . . . Tell him a farewell from me till 
I see him again, in the Fatherland. Embrace him for me, I 
pray you." 

For a time then he was sadly confused and 
troubled by two letters which reached him from the 
two bishops. The younger man in well-meant kind- 
ness urges him to come and see his friend again be- 
fore the end. The other, dictated bj' Bishop 
Grandin to his nephew, advises Father Lacombe not 
to leave his present mission — and the bishop sent a 
last adieu to his old comrade. 

"Trulj% between you — you tear my heart. . . ." 



414! FATHER LACOMBE 1902 

Father Lacombe writes; but out of the chaos comes 
the determination to match the sacrifice of his old 
friend. He writes: 

"I do not believe I should go to St. Albert. I 
shall stay to the end." Again he writes: "The 
thought of my suffering friend, praying for me, comes 
to encourage me when I ascend a pulpit to beg." 

He now sends $2000 more to Father Leduc, to 
be divided as follows: one-quarter for the Metis 
colony; one-quarter for the diocesan seminary and 
one-half for the needs of all missions throughout the 
diocese. 

With Bishop Legal back in the west Father La- 
combe finally had to "make the assault" upon the 
Ancient Capital himself. An impressionist letter 
picturing his first Sunday there is somewhat in- 
coherent, but delightfully naive: 

"Done, it was at the Basilica that the old Chief made his 
entree in the midst of a fine assemblage of clergy, students 
from the Great and Small Seminaries and the University. In 
the crowded congregation I noticed Sir Hector Langevin, M. 
de la Bruyere, and doubtless my friend ^ . . . was 
there." 

" 'Petierunt partem et non erat qui frageret eis!' 

" 'Dear friends of our young diocese of St. Albert, I come 

before you with the permission of your Archbishop and as 

the ambassador of my Bishops. I have been told that in your 

city you do not like long sermons : that if I wish to be agree- 

1 The Quebec journal, from whose attacks he had suffered. 



1902 FATHER LACOMBE 415 

able and make a good collection, I must be brief. C'est cela. 
I am going to be brief.' 

"Everybody in the church smiled. It was with this first 
blast that I opened fire in the old Basilica, the mother of 
churches in New France — 'To arms, my friends, open your 
purses. Furnish ammunition to sustain us against the at- 
taclis of adversaries. If the feet of the evangelizers are 
beautiful, et cetera — how beautiful are the hands of our bene- 
factors, who place in ours the mite of the Propagation of 
Faith, with the good wishes of our friends in Can- 
ada. . . .' 

"They smiled no longer. They wept with emotion. Abbe 
jNIarais said to me at dinner; "You opened the cataracts of 
the eyes and the heart.' 

"Pardon, my Lords, this recital of the doings of your old 
Chief— result, $434." 

One day this spring there came to Bishop Legal 
from his mendicant-friend an amusing outburst of 
indignation over the seeming extravagances of the 
newer generation of missionaries. The Bishop had 
written him asking special assistance for one of these, 
M'ho had been assigned to a city parish and who felt 
he should approximate eastern conditions in the up- 
keep of the rectory and church. 

Father Lacombe is evidently of another way of 
thinking: 

. This dear Father . . . !" he writes to the 
Bishop. "It is unbelievable there could be a being so short- 
sighted. Listen — I am going to write him a letter. Imagine 
— to go and buy an altar and put up a shed for his cow, when 
we have still so much to pay on the church !' 



416 FATHER LACOMBE 1902 

"But no, I assure you, I shall not send him a cent. How 
droll he is ! Now how will he collect enough to pay ofF this 
debt? He is naive and fool enough to believe that I should 
settle it. The poor man ! 

"Truly, here is something to shock my Reverend Father 
Superior." 

Yet when he had given expression to his feehngs 
by raising small tempests like this — and the bishop 
or somebody would remind him that times had 
changed in the west; that mud-floored houses, dried 
meat menus and rough board altars must be con- 
sidered out-of-date, at least in Edmonton, Calgary 
and Lethbridge, he would relent. Then he would 
generously help the young priest engaged in making 
his poor parish buildings adequate. 

His old territory of Alberta had already entered 
upon the remarkable period of development ushered 
in by the new century. Motor-cars were beginning 
to disturb the quiet of the Indian trails along the 
Bow and the Old Man's River. Elevators were 
everywhere rising on the level horizon. The Age of 
Progress was insolently thrusting itself upon the 
perceptions of the old Chief of the foothills; but he 
yet blandly refused to recognize it. 



XVII 

While the mendicant missionarj' made his way 
from parish to parish of Quebec his old comrade-in- 
arms was climbing the last stretch of the Trad, 
serenely waiting for the close of a life which many 
undemonstrative westerners have accounted exalted 
in its simple goodness and thought for Humanity. 

He was nearing the gates of the Fatherland, but 
found the last steps of the trail very painful, as the 
worn-out diseased body clung to its spirit. When he 
could not conceal his agony from friends at liis bed- 
side he would smile and quote Le^SIaistre : 

"If the warrior thanks the general who sends him to the 
assault, why should we not as well thank God who makes us 
suffer?" 

As a young priest with a lifetime of achievement 
before him he had faced death bravely in that awful 
winter night on Great Slave Lake. He welcomed it 
now with smiles. 

It was a solemnly beautiful drama of Death that 

was enacted in the bare sleeping-room of St. Albert's 

bishop. . . . The end came at sunrise on June 

3rd, when as the sun rose, mysteriously overcoming the 

417 



418 FATHER LACOMBE 1902 

mists and shadows of morning twilight, the priestly 
soul passed on to a new ministry — went in from the 
shadowy vestibule of Eternity to the incomparable 
realities. 

Those last three weeks of Bishop Grandin's Hfe 
diffused about St. Albert a new strange benediction, 
inexpressibly touching to the men who came and went. 
The secret of this perhaps was revealed in the 
Bishop's sole remark to the students kneeling at his 
bedside : 

"My children, when one loves God dearly one has 
no fear of death. To have loved and served God 
well — behold that is all that remains to a man, when 
the End comes!" 



Whilst he had been vigorously pursuing the cam- 
paign for funds, Father Lacombe was not without 
consolation from another quarter. As a result of his 
visit to Austria, Father Zoldach, the secretary of the 
Ruthenian Bishop of Stanislaus, had come to Canada 
to investigate conditions. 

On his return he sent out four Ruthenian priests 
to Manitoba. This summer he informed Father 
Lacombe that several missionaries would be sent to 
Alberta. 

Moreover his new collections were particularly 
satisfactory. Before February 23, 1902 he had to- 
gether with his aides amassed $12,754; while the Hon. 



1808 FATHER LACOMBE 419 

Rodolphe Forget had contributed in addition to this 
$5000 for a church in the INIetis colony. 

By the close of the campaign, which took place 
in October 1902 at St. Sauveur' in Quebec, Father 
Lacombe had poured $21,000 into the emjity coffers 
of St. Albert. 

He had begged, exhorted, praj'^ed and wept — 
though these waves of emotion were the jest of his 
younger brethren — and this $21,000 was his satisfy- 
ing harvest. Looking on the result he forgot all it 
had cost him. 

Before the New Year of 1903 he was again es- 
tablished in Calgary, surveying the southern district 
thoroughly after his prolonged absence. He was not 
always pleased. 

A critical, almost a carping disapprobation of the 
methods and manner of the newcomer is practi- 
cally inevitable on the part of the old-timer, and 
has marked the early progress of every portion of the 
west. Our pioneer Oblate, human as any other old- 
timer, did not escape this, and while he was adjust- 
ing himself to new conditions his heart flamed up in 
apostolic zeal more than once because of the ways 
of the young priests fresh from seminaries of the 
east. 

His particular grudge against them was one he held 
against all the pale-face newcomers — an indifference 
or lack of sympathy for the jNIetis, who still clung to 
the skirts of the towns. He was himself splendidly 
loyal to this sad remnant of a people; and the more 



420 FATHER LACOMBE 1903 

pitiful theii" condition the more passionate an advo- 
cate he became — the more assidously he sought them 
out and gave of his charity, spiritual and material. 

During this winter Father Louis Lebret, one of 
the old Guard, died at the Grey Nuns' hospital in 
Calgary after forty-four years of service in the vpest. 
Every day and many times a day before the end came 
his old friend trudged over from the Rectory, leaving 
aside his memoirs and Metis audiences to bring com- 
fort to the dying soldier of Christ, When he died 
Father Lacombe's arms were about him. 

In a letter to the Superior-General he writes : 

"Father Lebret, wherever he passed, went his way doing 
good, . . , He was the type of the true priest, a man 
of God. , . . Three days before his death I gave him 
the Viaticum of the wayfarer into other worlds. . , . 
Seated in his arm-chair, retaining all the clearness of his in- 
telligence ... he received the last great Sacrament of 
the dying. 

"Having anointed him I said to him: 'My brother and 
dear associate in these missions, show us how an Oblate 
should die.' 

"He responded to all the prayers and having received the 
last indulgences it was then — after his thanksgiving for the 
Holy Viaticum received that morning — he begged us to take 
seats near him. He said to us: 

" 'I have come to that solemn moment of life when I must 
take leave for another world. I have finished the course ; and 
my God, I come to Thee: into Thy hands I commend my 
Spirit!' 

" 'Father Lacombe, be my messenger to our Father-General, 



1908 FATHER LACOMBE 481 

whom I salute for the last time and from whom I ask pardon 
for my faults and failings. From you, my other Superiors, 
I ask forgiveness ; and from you, my brothers in religion — I 
beg you to pardon me and pray for me.' 

"Then taking up the Cross he had worn so long as an 
Oblate, with his rosary in his hands and his scapular on his 
breast, he renewed his vows. How beautiful it was to witness 
such a scene ! How happy I was to be an old Oblate and a 
brother of this apostle of our missions ! 

" 'Go,' I said to him then, 'my dear brother, depart for the 
true Fatherland. Go and ask our God to give me such a 
deatli as this.' 

"Yes, truly blessed are they who die in the Lord." 

During this winter — 1903 — Father Lacombe's wor- 
ries over the financial condition of his colony deep- 
ened. The outlook was not promising and it was not 
easy for even his robust heart to throw off such de- 
pression at seventy-seven. Most of his letters now 
are tinged with the growing fear of failure. 

Writing on February 14th to Father Therien, the 
administrator of the colony, he confesses that he is 
"heartsick of this problem." Having expended the 
$5000 collected in Quebec for the Colony they are 
still $1100 in debt. INIust they sell the cattle, close 
the school and tell the colony they can do no more 
for them? he asks pitifully. 

"And people will say then: 

" 'We spoke wisely in declaring Father Lacombe's plans 
were only Utopian.' And I, hanging my head, will have to 
say: 'Bonum est quia humiliastl me. . . .' " 



422 FATHER LACOMBE 1904 

His troubles jaundiced his vision. He can think 
of little else. A letter of March 13th to Bishop 
Legal opens with the growl — "It is dog-cold here"; 
and it runs to an apologetic conclusion through several 
unrelieved pages of details about his troublesome 
colony. 

But relief is approaching. A number of letters 
to Eastern friends have resulted in a fresh harvest 
for the master-beggar. The most important is prob- 
ably one from Lord Mountstephen, enclosing a 
cheque for $2000: 

"17 Caeleton Hottse Teeeace, S. W., March 4th, 1903. 
"My dear Father Lacombe: 

"I duly received your letter of 21st of January. I had not 
forgotten you and the old days of which you remind me, 
The photograph you gave me stands on my table and nevei 
out of my sight. 

"I think your efforts to train the young half-breeds to in- 
dustrial habits so that they may be able to gain their own 
living, is an excellent thing to do and a truly religious 
work. . . ." 

As a result of this kindly communication and ac- 
companying gift a letter written by Father Lacombe 
on March 19th, St. Joseph's Day, stands out in warm 
relief from all his other correspondence of this period, 

It glows with all his old bonhomie and enthusiasm. 
It is replete with the imagination of a child who still 
wanders in fairy-gardens — only that here the old 
priest's fancies play about his beloved advocate-saint 



1904 FATHER LACOMBE 423 

and image him wraith-likc invading a London draw- 
ing-room to befriend an old suppliant at Calgarj'. 

Truly some of the conquerors of the West have 
been "men with the hearts of Vikings and the simple 
faith of a child." 

"Calgary, March 19th, 
"Feast of St. Joseph. 

" 'Sowing in tears wc reap in joy.' 

"Yesterday- I went into our private chapel before the most 
Holy Sacrament, with St. Joseph and St. Anthony of Padua 
as witnesses, to pour out the excess of my heart. You know- 
that I weep easily and that the fountains of ray ej-es flow 
often in abundance. Tempus flendi et tempus ridendi! 

"Many times during my long life I have wept with grief, 
in hardships, contradictions and embarrassments; as likewise 
I have shed tears in moments of joy and satisfaction. Voyez- 
Tous, I have lachrymal fluid for all occasions. 

"Done, after this preamble, this is to say that yesterdaj' — 
St. Joseph's Eve, — this great saint accompanied by the Saint 
of Padua brought me this cheque for $2,000, which he had 
snatched from Lord Mountstephen in the city of London. 

"To-daj' with my whole heart I am giving thanks to Heaven 
and earth. . . ." 

He then consigns the money to the Bishop to be 
expended for the Metis colony, and he continues with 
a return of his old optimism : 

"It is for this undoubtedly that the Good Saviour prolongs 
my days, to aid in the completion of this redemption which 
appears impossible to all the world but ourselves. 

"P. S. I pray you, return to me this dear letter from my 
noble friend, Mountstephen." 



424, FATHER LACOMBE 190< 

Early in April Father Lacombe, in reply to j 
laughing comment about his foot-loose wanderings 
writes gaily to the Bishop : 

"Will you tell the Fathers at St. Albert that I have beer 
closed up here since last autumn and my feet 'do not burn 
more than usual? Band of humbugs that they are!" 

Now the time arrives when he can prove to hii 
scoffing friends his incHnations as a Hermit. Ir 
April a vicarial council was held at St. Albert and i1 
was there decided that Father Lacombe might no'w 
retire to his Hermitage. He hailed the decision wit! 
joy, and arranged to leave Calgary on May 5th. 

He had watched the log-mission grow to a prosper- 
ous parish. He had helped to estabhsh an excelleni 
order of teaching-nuns — the Faithful Companions— 
and the Grey Nuns' Hospital. He felt he had 
earned a release from further work in Calgary. 

Years ago a gold watch had been presented to him 
by the Mayor in the name of the citizens of Calgary 
Now comphmentary addresses and tributes of respecl 
were paid to the retiring rector in such numbers thai 
he seems to have grown suddenly aware that this de- 
monstrative affectionate Calgary might be a more de- 
sirable residence than he had imagined. . . . 
Still it was for him — "Hourrah pour le Hermitage 
quand meme!" 

Many of his comrades had retired or were dead. 
He felt that at his age it was proper, pious and con- 
venable that he too should go into retirement to pre- 



FATHF.K I.ACOMUF. 
'The trail he walks has dipped into the Vale of Sunset 



1904 FATHER LACOMBE 425 

pare his mind for another world. So he went. 
What he did not reckon with was his own habit of 
being continuallj- and ardently seized with ideas for 
the advancement of the missions, and the necessity of 
travelling to carry out his ideas. 

On May 7th he A\Tites the bishop from Pincher a 
letter full of content and gladness. He is at liberty 
again, and rejoices even in the use of his toy — the 
rubber stamp of the Hermitage — which has lain idle 
since it was dropped so unexpectedly a decade earlier 
to take his place at Ottawa as Archbishop Tache's 
I lieutenant. He writes: 

\"My Lord and Venerated Friend: 

j "Enfin! tandem! at last ! I have arrived at this dear Her- 
i niitage — the goal of my desires for a long time, as you know. 
' "Yesterday morning at six o'clock I went up the hill. I 
{knelt there in the silence of the dawn at the feet of the statue 
of my dear St. Michael — Quis ut Deus? — to say my great 
Te Deum. I gave the Benedicarmis Domino ^ to Father Blan- 
Ichet and to dear Brother Ryan. 

"You know this was a solemn moment for your old pio- 
neer! I went up to the Altar in the pretty church, where the 
morning sun came in through those splendid windows dazzling 
me. And then in the organ was the voice of St. Michael re- 
vealing himself to welcome me . . . !" 

He regrets the tumble-down condition of his old 
Hermitage, but declines the bishop's offer to have 
it repaired, as the building is not worth it. Not im- 

> The moriiinf: salutation. 



A26 FATHER LACOMBE 1904 

til they can pay the $3000 already owing here will he 
build a house, he says. 

A fortnight later however finds him busy on plans 
for a new Hermitage, as "my good friend Pat Burns 
tells me to give him the biU." He had accepted the 
kind offer of Calgary's first millionaire gladly — as 
readily and as free of embarrassment as he would 
divest himself of liis own possessions for a poorer 
man. 

One would look now for a few months repose for 
the hermit in his Hermitage — a breathing-spell at 
least until his feet begin to burn again. . , . 
But Nature itself conspires to rout him aut from 
the quiet of the foothills. 

Shortly after his return the terrible disaster 
of the Frank slide occurred, and Father Lacombe 
immediately departed for Frank. The misery of 
others was intolerable to him, unless he could at once 
spend himself in bringing relief: which he did for 
several days in the desolate mining-district. 

But he has been disturbed from his Hermitage, 
and once on the road with his modest bundles — from 
sheer force of habit he keeps there. He visits Cal- 
gary and Macleod; from the latter point he writes 
imploring the bishop to transmit a special pastoral 
letter to their poor friends the Metis who are only 
sinking lower and lower. The Metis are always "on 
his back" — and in his heart. 

From this time, June 7th, his letters show a quick 
passage of tlie hermit from Macleod to Cranbrook 



190i FATHER LACOMBE 427 

to St. Eugene, Nelson and even Xew Westminster. 
Upon his return to the Hermitage he devotes a week 
to his amiual retreat of prayer and meditation, and 
shortly after writes: 

"So the dear Fatlier Vegreville is dead. . . . Ha, the 
old ones are going! It is for this I made my retreat. One 
must be ready for all possibilities." 

In September he made a trip do^vn the Saskatche- 
wan on a raft and later by democrat from Edmon- 
ton to his colony. "Coute que coute," he writes the 
Bishop, he must not neglect liis !Metis. In December 
he visited several southern points as superintendent 
of the district of Calgary; but a letter from Leth- 
bridge on Christmas begs the bishop to release him 
even from tliis in future. His request was granted. 

His visit to St. Paul de ]\Ietis had not been re- 
assuring. He finds he is obliged to pack his her- 
mit's sack again and set out for the east to find new 
assistance for the colony. At St. Paul, where he Avas 
the guest of Archbishop Ireland and of James J. 
Hill, the latter shpped into the old priest's hand on 
leaving a cheque for $5000 to fonvard the work for 
his beloved jNIetis. In Xew York and [Montreal 
Thomas Ryan and Sir Thomas Shaughnessy added 
still other thousands to his Metis funds, and the old 
man's mind grew easy again. 

A trip to the Holy Land was now being planned 
for tlie old missionan,' by Archbishop Langevin. 
Outwardly he witheld his consent to the trip. For al- 



428 FATHER LACOMBE 1904 

though his feet were "burning" for this new and fas- 
cinating voyage — was it altogether oonvenahle foi 
the hermit of seventy-eight who had so often pro- 
claimed liis retirement to prepare for Eternity? 

Finally he consented, and set out for Europe with 
one eye fixed with desire on the Holy Land — and 
the other turned with apologetic regret to the de- 
serted Hermitage and the blank pages of the xinwrit- 
ten memoirs. 



XVIII 

AccOMP/VNiED by Archbishop Langevin and 
Father Corneiller of Ottawa, Father Lacombe sailed 
from New York late in April. His friends, hear- 
ing of his proposed tour, had subscribed the expenses 
of the journey — as he quite expected they would when 
he consented to go. Wild horses could not draw 
him from liis fixed policy of spending nothing upon 
himself that could possibly be diverted to the western 
missions. 

At Marseilles the Canadians joined a pilgrimage 
of French Catholics sailing for the Holj' Land. 
During a series of lectures given on board the ship 
Archbishop Langevin suggested to the director that 
his venerable companion be asked to lecture upon the 
Indians and his experiences. 

The evening of the lecture came, and the audience 
was astounded when "le vieiuv Papa," as they had 
named the old priest from Canada, took his place 
before them. Whj- was he chosen among so many 
briUiant men to deliver a lecture? 

The pilgrimage was made up of a highly cultured 
class of French laity and clergj', members of the 
old noblesse and some profound scholars. 

The audience's speculation concerning the lecturer 
scarcely outlasted his introductory remarks. Then 
429 



430 FATHER LACOMBE 1904 

he revealed himself; the crisp dramatic sentences, the e' 
indescribably picturesque and individual French with i 
its infusion of English and Cree, the vivid eyes of ! 
the old priest captured them. And soon he was in i 
most perfect rapport with his audience. His mag- 
netic personahty reached out and drew them to > 
him . . . before long he was playing on them as 
on a harp. 

They were laughing with him at tales of John i 
Rowand's day; weeping with him over the miseries 
of the abandoned squaw; thrilling at the battle of 
Three Ponds and the tribute of Sweet-Grass to Pope 
Pius IX in their winter-camp on the plains. 

Up to this he had been an obscure old missionary: 
now, again as in Montreal and Ottawa in the nineties, 
he was a Lion; and while he had not chafed at his 
obscurity he received the new homage of his com- 
panions with naive delight. Day by day his warm 
nature opened up in the sunshine of their apprecia- 
tion, at once finely sympathetic and intellectual; he 
feasted them with stories of the plains-life; his facile 
humour and flashes of scorn revealed the fire of the 
man's spirit ; his sense of the dramatic attuned to their 
own led them from noisy Indian-camps to the quiet 
Hermitage among the foothills. 

He called himself the Old Chief, the old Indian — 
and the French pilgrims, alert even on a pilgrimage 
for the novel and picturesque, felt that they had 
come upon an edition de luxe of a frontier type. 

His first lecture was such a success that Father 



1904 FATPIER LACOMBE 431 

Lacombe was urged to give another. He chose his 
own subject this time and to the consternation of 
his Canadian companions, he talked upon the famous 
book of Abbe Loisy, then recently published. 

He undertook valiantly to demolish the arg-uments 
of the book, and at the same time delivered a rep- 
rimand to tliose of a younger generation on board 
who could find anything to praise in it. . . . In 
a veiy few moments the old missionary' was flounder- 
ing shoulders-high in a stream of theological argu- 
ment for which notliing in his active i)lains-life had 
prepared hun. 

He had played many roles in Canada, but he had 
never been regarded by his bretliren as a scholar. 
Yet here he was in righteous indignation and pic- 
turesque dialect matching himself against Loisy and 
his subtleties — with a galaxy of French culture look- 
ing on ! 

It was to laugh, as the French phrase has it. But 
his audience was too keenly disappointed at missing 
his own matchless stories; in addition they were 
rapidly becoming bored . . . when iVrchbishop 
Langevin hazarded a suggestion to his old friend to 
talk Indians. 

With an almost impatient submission and an ex- 
planation that "the bishop did not understand the 
necessity of probing this matter" — the old missionary 
paddled back out of the troubled waters of Modern- 
ism into the picturesque streams of Indian life. But 
his heart was battling Loisy and his tongue refused 



432 FATHER LACOMBE 190 

its office. . . . The lecture shortly ended as i. 
failure. 

From Jerusalem he writes on May 18th to Bishoji 
Legal : 

"Jerusalem ! Yes, Jerusalem — the Holy City — where wf 
arrived last night. . . . Is it possible that I, a poor oldi 
Indian, am to-day in the country where our Saviour died?: 
Is it possible that this morning at three o'clock I offered the; 
Holy Sacrifice in the magnificent basilica of the Holy\ 
Sepulchre on the tomb of the Great Arisen! It is a favour i 
which was spontaneously accorded to the old chief of thee 
Northwest. . . ." 

His stay in the Holy Land was one long succes- 
sion of spiritual delights, of which he says he never 
could give adequate interpretation in his letters or 
conversation. 

While in Jerusalem his love of novelty brought him 
into an amusing and embarrassing situation. One 
day donning the gown and head-dress of a priest of 
the Greek rite a rumour spread among the pilgrims 
that the venerable Father Lacombe had adopted the 
eastern rite in order to devote himself to his Ruthe- 
nian brethren in Canada. The garments were 
merely a gift to him from the White Fathers, who had 
persuaded him to try them on, and enjoying the 
novelty of his latest role he had kept them on. 

The old missionary only smiled mysteriously when 
confronted with the rumour. Wearing his Greek 
vestments to church that evening, however, he was 



1904 FATHER LACOMBE 4a:i 

ovenvhelmed when the director of the pilgrimage 
called upon the congregation to pray for this devoted 
old Canadian priest who "notwithstanding his great 
years had adopted the rite of another branch of the 
Church — out of love for his Ruthenian brethren." 

The congregation of priests and laity prayed ferv- 
ently: the Archbishop and his embarrassed compatriot 
exclianged glances — teasing, amusement and aston- 
ishment in the one, and perplexity and mortification 
in the other. . . . Promptly on the conclusion 
of the ser^-ice the old plainsman in his Greek attire 
hurried off to the hotel, studiously avoiding his new 
friends and their congratulations on his devotedness. 

The Greek vestments did not again see the light of 
day on that journey. 

On the return trip to Rome the captain of the 
Etoile gave a banquet on the anniversarv* of Father 
Lacombe's ordination, and the old missionary' in an 
amusing after-dinner speech retrieved the failure of 
his address on the Abbe Loisy and ^Modernism. 

At Rome he received a warm welcome from the 
new Pontiff, Pius X. They met first at a public 
audience where the Pope moved slowly between two 
lines of pilgrims speaking a kindly word of greeting 
to all. When he came to Father Lacombe he 
stopped, at Archbishop Langevin's instance, and the 
old missionaiy was introduced. 

The two men, humble and good and great, looked 
into each other's eyes with mutual recognition of the 
fine soul of the other. Tt did not matter that their 



434. FATHER LACOMBE 1904 

positions were as wide apart as the color of their robes 
— the snow white of the Pontiff, and somewhat rusty 
black of the Missionary. 

The heroic son of the French-Canadian habitant 
knelt for the blessing of the great son of the Italian 
peasant, and as he rose the Holy Father added smil- 
ing, "Well done — well done! Ad Multos annos!" 

On June 27th, the Canadians left for London by 
way of Vienna, where the Emperor again received 
Father Lacombe. His Majesty was on the point 
of departure from Vienna, and the audience had to 
be very brief. When admitted the Archbishop spent 
some minutes in an exchange of courtesies, affably 
paying his respects to Austria's overlord, Father 
Lacombe meanwhile chafing impatiently at the 
loss of precious moments and the dimming chances 
of a petition carefully framed for the Emperor's 
ears. 

He suddenly interrupted, with an impatient gesture 
toward his Archbishop : 

"But the time is short; and — M'sieu VEmpereur — 
what we want is some money for those Ruthenian 
missions we have in our country!" 

The Emperor turned smiling to the old "saint 
audace" assuring him of a gift; and as this was for- 
warded to him next day. Father Lacombe could 
never be brought to see or regret his breach of 
etiquette. 

On the railway journey in Germany, some hours 
out of Frankfort, Father Lacombe had the mis- 



11903 FATHER LACOMBE 435 

I fortune to lose the cross that for fifty-five years he 
had worn on his person as a member of the Oblate 
Order. At Liege in Belgium he attended tlie Gen- 
:eral Chapter of his Order, and shortly afterward 
I sailed for home. 

■ By November he was again in his Hermitage. 
But he was summoned from it on the 15th of Janu- 
ary, 1905, by a disaster so sudden and cruel that it 
required aU the hope and strength and faith of his 
old heart to rally under it. 

The big convent industrial school at the Metis 
colony, built by the alms of his friends and shelter- 
ing one hundred and twenty children, was burned 
to the ground the night before. Practically nothing 
was saved from the flames. One poor child was 
burned and the sisters, who had repeatedly risked 
their own lives in bringing the children out of the 
convent, had several narrow escapes. 

Hurrjnng north he writes to Bishop Legal who 
was then in IMontreal: 

"I am en route to Edmonton to meet Father Tliericn. 
God's will be done, we say — but what are we going to do? 
The children will have to be dispersed — and the Sisters, where 
are they.' My God, how sad it is! Again what are we 
going to do.'' The only resources I have — $1,.500 — are al- 
ready lent for five years to these poor Sisters of Pinchcr 
Creek, or rather to their community. ... I am nearly 
sure that you will want to send me to Ottawa. But I am not 
going there. If Father (whose feet burn), and Fa- 
ther wish to go, it is tlieir affair. 



436 FATHER LACOMBE 1906 

He immediately ^Tote an impassioned appeal for 
help in the form of an open letter and published it 
in La Patrie of JMontreal, which was owned by his 
friend, the Hon. Mr. Tarte. 

From somewhere he secured $100 which he for- 
warded to Father Therien, the Superintendent of the 
colony, to help liim start a house for the Sisters. He 
feels unable to make a fresh campaign in the East 
for funds: he is worsted — there is no hght ahead. 
He writes to the bishop : 

"My Lord, I will not again take up my beggar's staff. 
That is finished. If money does not come otherwise, our 
work must fail." 

And he adds a postscript : 

"What will the Government do .'' Will they withdraw from 
their contract with our corporation.'' At least I hope they 
will leave to the half-breeds already estabUshed the right of 
occupying their land and homesteads." 

If it be true that one trouble mitigates another by 
a process of counter-irritation, then Father La- 
combe was fortunate on going to Ottawa in 1905, to 
find new cause for wo^^}^ The Autonomj'' BiU, 
providing for the creation of the new provinces of 
Alberta and Saskatchewan, was then being discussed 
in the Commons, and the clauses relative to school 
matters had started an embittered discussion within 
and outside the House. In their Bill the Govern- 
ment had yielded a tardy justice to the demands of 



1 



1906 FATHER LACOMBE iSl 

the Western Catholics and their brethren in the East, 
making provision for a system of Separate Schools 
in the new provinces. 

Sir Wilfred Laurier, who had brought the Liberal 
party into power in 1896 by promises held out to the 
Catholic school part}" felt that this was an acceptable 
occasion to redeem his pledges to some extent, and 
in the war that waged then about the frail, handsome 
figure of the first Canadian of his day he showed to 
greater advantage than ever before. 

Toward the end of ^larch Father Lacombe re- 
turned to his Hermitage: then he passed the sum- 
mer in parochial work at Pincher and Medicine 
Hat, for the mission-field was widening and was al- 
ready beyond the number and force of the younger 
missionaries. 

His work brought him again in contact with the 
half-breeds who lived around the towns so that in 
October when he made his way back to his Hermitage 
from the Hat and received disappointing news from 
his colony it is not surprising he should write this 
heartbroken letter to the one friend who with him- 
self believed in the work for the jVIetis : 

"Nobody to-day can understand my trouble, my grief, my 
disappointment — I have onlj- God for witness of my devoted 
desire to save this population. I will go down into the grave 
with this sorrow in ray heart repeating 'Bonum est quia hu- 
miliasti me.' My poor Metis ! I see them to-day in the 
prisons, demoralized, about the cities begging for the leavings 
of the whites to nourish them and clothe their nakedness. 



438 FATHER LACOMBE 190t 

And what is most sad is that, humiliated and debased hy the 
whites, some do not venture to come to the divine services but 
remain drinking in their tents. 

"I can only weep in secret over this deplorable state — not 
even before my brethren, who have no longer any sympathy 
for these disheartened Christians. At least you, the first pas- 
tor, aid me to save these unfortunates." 

The handwriting in his letters now noticeably in- 
creases in size and unevenness, even as the letters grow 
shorter. All this betrays the fatigue of age. His 
years are printing themselves still more plainly on 
his weakening form, but with his habit of eating little 
— scarcely more than one meal a day — he contrives 
to be always in fair health. 

In January 1907, he made a brief visit to Edmon- 
ton and St. Albert district. At Beaumont, a small 
French-Canadian settlement in which he had estab- 
lished the mission twelve years earlier he officiated 
one Sunday of his visit. People flocked from all 
over the countryside to hear the '"fameux Pere 
Lacombe" who said to them during his address: 

"We are told that in the earliest days of the Church 
an old white-haired man, bent with age and partic- 
ularly tried by the labors of a long and painful 
apostolate, being no longer able to walk by himself 
had himself carried by his disciples into the midst 
of an assemblage of the faithful and there he did not 
cease to repeat: 

" 'My little children, love one another.' 

"This old man was the apostle St. John. Eh, bien. 



1907 FATHER LACOMBE 439 

to-day you have before you another old man. Hav- 
ing had the happiness of founding this good parish, 
he has wished to visit once more a place filled with 
memories for him, and to come to give you some ad- 
vice wliich I am sure his white hairs will make you 
hear with respect : I will say to you nothing else than 
that which St. John said; hke him I shall repeat to 
you, — 'Love one another.' " 

Even yet the old missionary could thrill his au- 
diences when he chose; and he did so that night as 
he closed a lengthy address on the West with tliis 
clarion call — 

"Advance the work of colonization! Do not rest 
idle in the shade. Do not go elsewhere to seek the 
benefits you have here and can enjoj^ with more ad- 
vantages. The future is yours, if you will seize the 
present. Courage and tenacity — these form the se- 
cret of success!" 

It was while he made this sojourn in the north 
that, meeting me, he renewed a request first made in 
1904: would I not relieve him of the work upon his 
Memoirs? This time I agreed, arranging to spend 
some months near the Hermitage to secure liis 
I reminiscences. 

By February 28th, which was his eightieth birth- 
day the old Chief^ — as he was wont to call himself 
now — ^was in Montreal. Archbishop Bruchesi, plac- 
ing the Palace at his disposal, suggested that he give 
a birthday banquet to his friends. Father Lacombe 
was charmed with the novel idea, deeply touched too 



MO FATHER LACOMBE 1907 

at the "delicacy of thought and the courtesy of this 
dear Ai-chbishop," and straightway issued numerous 
invitations. 

In April he wrote his bishop with some malice 
prepense in the idea of turning the tables upon his 
teasing brethren: 

"Done, soon we shall commence the fameiuc Memoirs, but 
I have a new plan concerning them ! It is very interesting 
for you and others of my friends to push me unceasingly to 
undertake this work which is far from making me smile. 

"But will it not be permitted me for my part to ask all our 
Ancients to write their Memoirs also, uniting them with mine 
to make one entire book out of them? I propose this and 
ask you to have the following missionaries write their Mem- 
oirs: 

"1st. Bishop Legal, who apart from his title and position 
has had a long experience among the Indians in the founda- 
tion of this diocese. This would make a fine complement to 
the Life of Bishop Grandin. 

"2nd. The venerable Father Lestanc. How many things 
would this venerable missionary have to tell of his remem- 
brances of whites and Indians, and his voyages with the half- 
breeds into the prairies ! 

"3rd. Dear Father Tissier — ^who could relate his sojourn 
at the Peace River and his work among us. 

"4th. Dear Father Leduc — who has also reminiscences en 
masse. With his good memory, what interesting things 
would he not recall ! It seems to me that he is one of Ours 
who has achievements and deeds to record. 

"5th. The Rev. Father Grandin with his position of Vicar, 
would he not be counted amone the Ancients? He had his 



i 



1907 FATHER LACOMBE Ul 

experiences also among the savages, half-breeds and whites. 
Being the nephew of our first Bishop and a capable mis- 
sionary, we should invite him to write his IVIemoirs. 

"6th. The benign Pere Doucet — is he not one of the most 
ancient.'' Notwithstanding his humility and his reluctance to 
talk, he should be compelled to write his Memoirs. How 
many things could he not tell us about the Indians, Metis and 
the rest.'' . . . 

"Done, My Lord, such is my new plan ! It is very fine 
for you to start me upon this job, but let each one take a 
part in the work, which should be of especial interest to all 
these Ancients." 

Spending the most of the remainder of 1907 at 
the Hermitage he writes solemnly on New Year's 
eve to his bishop. The letter is that of an old man, 
full of years and wisdom. He assmnes again the 
role of first Counsellor as in the days of Bishop Tache, 
concluding the letter with a word of advice to the 
bishop to give latitude to young priests, especially 
when they possess a certain aptitude and capacit)' for 
their duties. 

"With politeness and charity," he says, "put the 
old aside, for they will have enough good sense to 
understand their position." 



XIX 

The year 1908, which was mainly spent in his 
Hermitage, brought the old "Chief of the Foothills" 
to the parting of the Ways. 

He was eighty-one. He had hved to see the last 
traces of the frontier regime lost in the progress of 
modern cities — ^to see old trails trod by himself and 
his "fameux Aleocis" buried beneath asphalt. But 
up to this, in his colony of St. Paul, he had held him- 
self staunchly identified with his now-humble friends 
■ — the Metis — in contradistinction to the "proud pale- 
faces who overrun our lands." 

He was now to witness the breaking of this last 
tie. 

The superintendent of the colony had reahzed for 
some time that it was no longer possible to continue 
that settlement on the basis planned by Father La- 
combe. Of those who had been brought there and 
surrounded with every advantage many had willed 
to turn their backs on the quiet countiy life, to drift 
again to the lights, the cheap pleasures and vice of 
the city purlieus they had known. 

Several others had moved out of the colony to 

ordinary homesteads. Those who remained — about 

eighty families in all — ^were well-established on 

farms and on the way of making an independent live- 

442 



1907 FATHER LACOMBE 443 

lihood. Father Therien urged that the plan of com- 
munity life should be broken, and the INIetis put on 
the status of any other homesteader in the West. 

In consideration of the money expended in that 
region by the Oblate order and their friends he sug- 
gested that a certain portion of land be deeded to the 
controlling syndicate, while the remainder should be 
throwTi open to homesteaders in the usual way. 

The plan immediately recommended itself to 
Bishop Legal and Archbishop Langevin, two mem- 
bers of the sjTidicate who had begun to consider 
this expensive philantliropic work something of a 
white elephant. Father Lacombe was the last to be 
won to it, but he was confronted by the continually 
failing finances and his own enfeebled forces. 

As cogent as either of these reasons was the indis- 
putable fact that many of the Metis he had hoped to 
"redeem" would not submit to the redemption, when 
they found themselves confronted wath the routine 
of farmwork. 

On March 28th Father Lacombe -wrote to Bishop 
Legal that if all the members of the syndicate 
favoured the plan and the Government consisted to 
it — "then I submit to it." This was his renunciation 
of the one big undertaking of his Hfe in which he 
felt he had not succeeded. 

In the spring of 1909 the alteration of the Colony 
was effected by the Government, and St. Paul de 
Metis as a protected colony ceased to exist. 

Father Lacombe, deprived of one scheme of be- 



444 FATHER LACOMBE 190T 

nevolence, immediately sought another. He was 
now inspired to throw all his energies into a Plan, 
which had been in his mind in a vague way for 
years. . . . Very occasionally he had spoken of 
it, wistfully and timidly almost, as "my dream of 
an old missionary." He resolved to realize this now 
— and so provide a refuge for the orphans and home- 
less aged of Alberta. 

Progress had made its own of the old hunting- 
ground of his Indians, and in its spectacular march 
the weak — as elsewhere — were thrust to the wall. 
Father Lacombe's heart called out to him to help 
these. 

Everyone else in the West was intent upon the 
opportunities and necessities of development. Gov- 
ernments were absorbed in constructive legislation 
and public works. Young missionaries expended 
their energies in forming new missions for the in- 
pouring immigrants. Individuals were busy making 
fortunes or places for themselves. 

They had no time to seek those in danger of fall- 
ing bjr the way: this mission remained for the Man- 
of-the-Good-Heart. 

As soon as Father Lacombe realized that this was 
to be his next undertaking his mind became a glow- 
ing smelting-pot of plans about the Home. There 
must be found money to build and maintain the in- 
stitution, a competent staff to conduct the Home, a 
suitable site in some pretty country place, where the 
children could learn to work the land — and a stream 



1907 FATHER LACOMBE 445 

by which the old people would have a pleasant seat 
under the trees to dream or pray their last days away. 

Strangely enough, in view of his own busy old 
age and inability to be tranquil — Father Lacombe 
never lost his belief in the tranquil old age as the 
Ideal. 

He now approached Mr. Burns of Calgarj^ and 
after a couple of interviews the delicious old diplomat 
came away the possessor of 200 acres of good farm- 
land with the stream and trees and in the exact lo- 
cality he desired. Then he mapped out a progress 
through the province to beg again — more audacious, 
more imperious and more wheedling than ever, be- 
cause he felt so little time remained to him. 

Upon the initiation of His Excellency Lord Grey 
a celebration of Quebec's tercentenary had been ar- 
ranged to take place during the following summer. 
Elaborate preparations were being carried out for a 
pageant of the Old Regime, and Father Lacombe 
as an historic figure, known from end to end of Que- 
bec, was invited to take some part in the festivities. 

He writes the bishop on June 15th: 

"Done, I am not going to Quebec. There are many other 
things more important for the old Chief of the Mountains 
than to go and bow myself before the crosses and mitres of 
the centenarians. Excuse me, I forget myself — bless me !" 

The more important matters which occupy him are 
the plans for his Home — "cette oeuvre ineffable" — 
and the giving out of reminiscences for his memoirs. 



'446 FATHER LACOMBE 1907 

His plan of campaign for the Home is not yet com- 
plete — but when it is, he dictates serenely to his ec- 
clesiastical superior, 

"You will publish a pastoral letter to annoimce 
our work." 

It will be recalled that Father Lacombe was one 
of the founders of the Indian school system in 
Canada. A volvmiinous correspondence with the In- 
dian Department, which remains in his possession, 
indicates to what a large extent the department was 
guided by him in its earliest administration of the 
schools. 

He was naturally interested this year when a ques- 
tion arose concerning the need of improving the sys- 
tem. He was frank in his expression of opinion: 

"With my experience of those schools on which so 
much thought and money has been expended I can 
only say that they have not been the success we hoped 
for. We taught some boys and girls who were 
bright as white children. . . . But that was only 
the beginning — the real problem came when they 
left school. 

"To go back to their homes — not white, and not 
Indians any longer! Many were failures. . . . 
Oh, it is very sad to think about all that — when you 
remember all the love and work and sacrifice we put 
into these schools. . . . 

"I am too old now. I am useless for that," the 
octogenarian continued with painful emphasis of his 
own failing powers. "But if I were a young man 



i 



1907 FATHER LACOMBE 447 

again" and his voice rose to fresh strengUi as his in- 
domitable spirit fired him — "that would be mj^ mission 
— just to make a success of our Indian schools." 

In November he accompanied Bishop Legal to 
Chicago, where thousands of laymen and ecclesiastical 
dignitaries attended the first Cathohc missionary 
congress of the Xew World. Here he went his way 
content in an obscurity overcast by the forms of thou- 
sands of young, eager men marshalling their forces 
of organization. 

Apart from the large issues discussed there were 
numerous side-lights which caught the still-han'est- 
ing eyes of the veteran and revealed him no non- 
progressive. When the newer missionaries described 
to him a chapel-car which was kept moving along 
western railroads among settlers living in isolated 
groups without churches — he told them of the chapel- 
tent built bj^ himself forty years before. 

His host, a Chicago millionaire, took the veteran 
for many rides in his motor car — once gliding along 
mUes of smooth boulevards at the rate of twenty-five 
miles an hour. At the end the party found Father 
Lacombe serenely exultant, his eyes afire with pleas- 
ure, his sturdy old-timer's spirit unquenched by the 
lightnings of the New Age. They awaited surprised 
comment from him; instead he remarked to his host 
with a t'svinkling ej^e — 

"Why don't you go more fast? This is not fast 
enough for me!" . . . 

Had not his dogs — shaggy Pappilon and his mates 



448 FATHER LACOMBE 1907 

— skimmed over the hard snow at a rate that took 
one's breath away? And would Papillon's master 
confess to surprise at the speed of a Chicago automo- 
bile ? — Not so long as the heart of an old-timer burned 
in him. 

Father Lacombe in the retirement of his Hermitage 
had now no part or interest in the political world, 
into which he had once been thrust so prominently. 
But his former intercourse had given him decided 
convictions, as indicated in a conversation this autumn : 

"I have never belonged to any party. As a citi- 
zen and patriot I would always support the party 
which rules the country for the time. It is stupid 
to do otherwise. 

"The people have voted: the majority has said — 
'This party shall govern the country.' Then it is 
my duty to help that party govern in the wisest way. 
The work of opposition is for the opposing party 
in the House. But even they should not stir up the 
people wrongfully. 

"I consider it criminal for a member of the op- 
position who, when he believes a certain measure good 
for the country, votes against it because it was in- 
troduced by the Government and its passage may 
strengthen the governing party with the people. 
. . . Criminal! Stupid! 

"Such men, politicians — to whatever party they 
belong — I would see them thrown down like that!" 
he said, witli a vigorous gesture of his closed fist to- 
ward the floor. 



190T FATHER LACOMBE 449 

"They have no conscience — no patriotism. 1 
would excuse such conduct only in the unformed 
school-boy, who believes he must follow his 'gang' in 
everything they do. 

"Why should I oppose the party that governs, as 
long as it is doing right ? Stupid! That is a strange 
way to be a patriot. . . . But when they do 
wrong — then let everyone unite and turn them out! 

"When Sir John was governing the countiy I did 
all I could to help him. When Laurier came I did 
what I could to help liim. But one day I said to 
Laurier: 'If you went out of power to-morrow, I 
would support the next Government.' He only 
laughed and said: 'I beheve 5^ou would.' " 

The time was now ripe for his new campaign, and 
he blithely opened the New Year — 1909 — with a 
series of collections for the building-fund of the 
Home. Throughout Alberta he passed, until he had 
exhausted the generosity of his friends there — when 
he journeyed on to Eastern Canada and renewed his 
efforts. 

At Quebec in August he attended with hundreds 
of other ecclesiastics the first Plenary Council of the 
Church held in Canada. Here as at Chicago it was 
the old missionary's part to look on at the energy 
and scholarly ability of younger brethren. 

On liis return west he accompanied the bishop to 
St. Albert, and was there the centre of a festival in 
celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of his ordina- 
tion. Linked with this was the celebration of the 



450 FATHER LACOMBE 1907 

fiftieth anniversary of the Grey Nuns' arrival in the 
diocese. For two days the little Cathedral town was 
en fete. 

Under the trees in the gardens of the Indian 
School sweet-faced nuns of many Orders and in 
varied garb moved gently, the guests of their pioneer 
sisters — the Grey Nuns. 

But over the hill on the grounds of the rambling 
old wooden Palace, the scene was more vividly in- 
teresting, if less picturesque. For the Old Guard 
of the Indian missions were there in force mingling 
with scores of younger Oblates. 

They were of the men who had touched upon the 
first score of years Father Lacombe spent in the West. 
Some had held their splendid physique almost unim- 
paired. Others were shrunken and stooped and 
transparently frail: one and all were modest, unas- 
sertive and light-hearted as school-boys. 

There was Father Tissier, gentle and shrewd, who 
still dated the past from the year Father Lacombe 
blessed his isolation on the Peace by a fraternal visit : 
Father Leduc, capable, great-hearted and droUy hu- 
morous, bearing still with him the marks of the 
plague of 1870, and Father Blanchet who had shared 
the dangers of that period with him. 

Father Grandin was there, with leonine head and 
masses of silver hair— now the Provincial head of 
his Order in Alberta : Father Doucet, the gentle and 
meek — "God's lamb" and the beloved of his sturdier 
brother. Father Lacombe. 



1907 FATHER LACOMBE 451 

Father Lestanc was there too — stooped and deaf, 
but alert and genial still, his tongue sharp as of old 
Xi turn wit or satire, and his spirit as ready as on 
the night he opposed Donald Smith in old Fort 
Garry; Father Legoff, linguist and author, and in 
1885 a prisoner of Big Bear. Finally there was the 
jbishop himself, who had elected as an Oblate to know 
lexile from Old France and had shared the mud- 
chinked hut on the Blood reserve with Father La- 
fcombe. 

\ A banquet was given at which the governor of 
the province, members of the Government, prominent 

ren of the district and old-timers were guests. 
Father Lacombe made an after-dinner speech 
tnere, revealing such exquisite humour and depths of 
diplomacy with bursts of naivete that his audience 
for more than half an hour hung on his words and 
punctuated his phrases with delighted laughter. It 
I was a notable speech for a man of eighty-two, 
: Here and there in the crowds on the sunny lawns 
1 those days moved quietly a slim, erect young-old man 
who bore a striking resemblance to Father Lacombe. 
It was Gaspard Lacombe, the foot -loose wanderer, 
I anchored at last. But while the priest of eighty -two 
was still an eager, high-spirited boy in heart the lay- 
man of three-score was tired and more than a httle 
wistful. 

At a soiree in the Hall dusky small boys clad 
as Indians enacted in fascinating pantomime set to 
music the battle of 1865, when Father Lacombe had 



452 FATHER LACOMBE 1907 

interposed between the Blackfeet and Crees. In an- 
other scene girls symboHcally represented the twelve 
foundations laid by the old man who looked on with 
childlike delight at their skilful representation. 

Finally there drifted out from the wings a fairy- 
like troop of children who crowned the veteran with 
flowers. Then discrowning himself the old priest 
made his way slowly, heavily through the strewn 
flowers to the stage. There he delicately turned the 
tide of feeling from himself to the three nuns who 
had so bravely ventured in to Ste. Anne's forest- 
mission fifty years before: devoted women who had 
passed to their reward while he still lingered as a 
link with the Past. . . . 

After the soiree the darkness of the night on the hill 
was radiantly troubled with showers and swords 
and balls of pyrotechnic fire: and here the festival 
ended. 

A few days later Father Lacombe went to Ed- 
monton to greet Lord Strathcona who was then on 
a tour of the West. 

The two old friends met on the lawn at Govern- 
ment House, where smartly-frocked westerners were 
assembling for the reception to the High Commis- 
sioner. 

The great empire-builder went forward to meet 
the little man in the black cassock — also an empire- 
builder in his way. 

"Ha, my old friend!" said Father Lacombe with 
caressing notes, "I am glad — ^glad to see you." 



1907 FATHER LACOMBE 453 

Deep pleasure lit up the face of each, as though 
consciousness of a kinship — in wliich none of the new- 
comers shared — had suddenly transmuted their 
mutual esteem and liking into a glowing affection. 

Strathcona had been thrown from his carriage a 
few days before in British Columbia and had his 
right arm in a sling. The injured member now 
caught the attention of the JMan-of-the-Good-Heart 
and he put out a quick hand of sympathy, suddenly 
mindful of the other's age and the fatigues of his 
journey. 

He spoke his fears: but Strathcona brushed them 
aside as laughingly as he would have done on their 
trip to St. Paul forty j^ears earlier: and the old priest 
murmured liis admiration: 

"Ha, that is like you, always — j'ou never would 
complain!" 

The two pioneers now withdrew to a bench beneath 
the trees, oblivious of the assembling guests. As 
they sat together, Strathcona's hand in the warm 
clasp of Pere Lacombe, the two old men studied one 
another covertly for the marks of the years. 

They rallied each other on their youthfulness, these 
two white-haired veterans who would not grow older : 
and they laughed at Strathcona's assurance that they 
were still boys. 

Then as memories rose like exhalations from the 
Past shutting off themselves and the years they had 
knowTi from the gathering ranks in gala attire, they 
dropped into tender reminiscence of the old-times 



454. FATHER LACOMBE 1907 

— le bon vieux temps — for which they stood alone 
that day. 

Presently the conversation was lifted from the 
Past — the live Present had pressing claims upon these 
boys of more than four-score; and when the gentle 
transition was complete it was the new Home — that 
dream of an old man — of which they talked. 

Father Lacombe was making a plea for a "little 
souvenir" for the Home and the poor it would shelter; 
but it is doubtful if the other heeded his words greatly. 
This man of many dreams and vast possessions felt 
the greater urgency of an appeal that was wordless 
— the well-spent years, the radiant humanity of the 
man in the cassock. 

They had each gone into the wilderness striplings 
with staff and scrip and the mind to do great things. 
The one man was now a peer of the realm and a 
man of immense wealth; the other had little more 
than his staff and scrip, but with them he was a prince 
of hearts and good works. 

His lightly worded plea for aid was scarcely ut- 
tered before the assurance came — and with this little 
matter past the two picked up the threads of old 
memories until the hour for the reception. 

They took leave of each other now. A long warm 
handclasp — a long steady look of farewell: "Good- 
bye; God bless you!" from Father Lacombe, and a 
wistful question unspoken between the two! Then 
the old priest swiftly lifted his friend's hand to his 
lips; and was gone. 



1907 FATHER LACOMBE 455 

The "little souvenir" came shortly after from 
Strathcona. It was a cheque for $10,000. 

In 1910, having collected $30,000 for his Home 
Father Lacombe ordered its construction at a cost of 
about twice that sum. He then spent the summer at 
Midnapore pottering delightedly about the building, 
watching it grow brick by brick; while the workmen 
grew pleasantly familiar with the inquisitive paternal 
old form stooping over his stick. 

He lived nearby in a small frame-building as bare 
as the shack at JNIacleod in the eighties. Nothing of 
all the funds he had begged remained to him — noth- 
ing of all the gifts that had been showered upon him : 
for giving has been his especial weakness. 

But the old man needed none of these. He was 
still rich in his own personality. The primal ele- 
ments of joyousness, fearlessness and grit that sus- 
tained him in his prime were still with him: though 
frequently obscured with the small vanities and curi- 
osities of a child, or fitful bursts of annoyance. 

These last only waited upon a comprehending 
gleam in another's ej^es to be dissolved into smiles — 
deHciously-knowing, self-accusing smiles that flut- 
tered roguishlj^ across the fine old face. No estimate 
of Father Lacombe is adequate that does not empha- 
size the charm of this delightful responsiveness and 
accompanying humour. Even at eighty-four no tran- 
sition of another's thought was too quick or subtle for 
his Gallic intuition — unless he chose for diplomatic 
reasons most blandly to ignore it. 



456 FATHER LACOMBE 1907 

In October of 1910 Father Lacombe went to Ed- 
monton to meet his friend, His Excellency Count 
Andreas Szeptickyi, primate of the Ruthenian Cath- 
olics, who was then touring the Ruthenian missions 
in the west. 

On November 9th the Lacombe Home was offi- 
cially opened at Midnapore by Bishop Legal. It 
was not for nothing that the failing forces of the old 
man had been ralhed: that a master-brain and a 
master-hand had laid his world again under tribute. 
Because of it this last beneficent dream of Father 
Lacombe had been realized. 

But the Home was practically without revenue, 
and his poor could not live on his sympathy alone. 
The old man had to bestir himself again. He ex- 
plained his needs to his friend, Mr. Burns, and the 
institution was thereafter bounteously supplied with 
good meat. 

He went to St. Albert and commandeered from the 
bishop's farm a carload of potatoes. He descended 
on Lethbridge and returned with a couple of carloads 
of coal from a friend's colleries. From another source 
came the lordly gift of lumber to erect large outbuild- 
ings, and two railways conspired with the generous 
donors in transporting these gifts. The officials were 
not afraid of creating a dangerous precedent: there 
could never be another Pere Lacombe nor such an- 
other irresistible beggar in the cause of humanity. 

Before six months had passed over two-score of 
persons were gathered there under the mantle of his 



1907 FATHER LACOMBE 457 

charity and he was dwelHng in the Home with them. 
He is now content. His feet no longer burn to go 
on long journeys; but incessantly active still he 
wanders about his habitation and its precincts — 
searching among his new proteges for a cause in 
Avhich he may benevolently meddle. 

It is here, he says, with the poor of Alberta — 
with his poor — that he shall close his ej'^es in the last 
sleep. 

"And it is here, in this House of Fatherly Love, 
that the tangled trails of the west, which beckoned 
to the stripling in 1849, meet and find their end. 



THE EXIT 

"The true missionary is the finest soldier now left 
in the world" — the late General Butler avowed in his 
sketch of Father Lacombe and his confreres. 

Assuredly no soldier travelled with lighter knap- 
sack than this missionary of the plains: none waged 
more earnest battles. Few have left such evidences 
of their passing. 

In the late twilight of a life that has been Homeric 
he lives still — with his heart in the Past: dominant 
and picturesque, as a figure standing out from^ an- 
other age than ours. 

But the trail he walks has dipped into the Vale 
of Sunset. Some day it will mount suddenly to the 
summit of the Long Divide. . . . Beyond that 
the Dawn lies ! 

As his dear old form moves down the trail into 
the deepening shadows, with the voices of another 
world faintly audible before him and around him, he 
halts at many a stopping-place for a backward look 
at the friends and the west he loves so truly. 

And then softly as the gathering shadows — warmly 
as the sunshine of his beloved Alberta — his benedic- 
tion falls serenely upon u^ — ■ 

"Good-bye. God bless you!" 
458 



INDEX 



Abbott, Sir John, 330. 
Aberdeen, Lord, 325, 350, 371, 

374., 405. 
Aberdeen, Lady, 325, 350, 405. 
Alexandria, 332. 
Alexis, "the famous," becomes 

guide of Father Lacombe, 50, 

98, 108, 113, 14.1, 146, 195, 263; 

death of, 264. 
Algonquin, 44. 
Andre, Father, 116, 127, 161, 163, 

184. 
Angus, R. B., 252, 275. 
Anvers, 398. 
Athabasca, River, 168, 181, 364, 

376. 
Athabasca' Lake, 384. 
Athabasca Landing, 379. 
Austria, 396. 
Autonomy Bill, 435. 
Autun, 218. 
Avoca, Vale of, 129. 

B 

Baker, J. G., and Company, 170, 

263. 
Baltimore, 316. 
Banff, 318. 
Bannock, 105. 

Bassano, Comte de, 216, 404. 
Battleford, 259, 285, 286. 
Battle, River, 196. 
Baudin, Father, 228. 
Bear Hills, 304. 

Beaver district, H. B. C, 47, 259. 
Beaver River, 205. 
Beaver Hills, 104. 
Beaver Indians, 376. 
Beaumont, 430. 
Bedson, Col., 308. 



Belcourt, Rev. George, visits Mon- 
treal, 9; in Pembina mission, 21. 

Belgium, 376, 396. 

Belly River, 195, 268. 

Benton, Fort, 168, 170, 194. 

Berthier, 37. 

Bie, Abb6 de, 375. 

Big Bear, Chief, 295, 308. 

Big House, the, 43, 47. 

Bitter-root Valley, 105. 

Blackfeet, the— trading at Ed- 
monton, 59-61; epidemic in 
camps of, 70-72; call for Fa- 
ther Lacombe, 80, 89; threaten 
Edmonton House, 101, 105, 115. 
176; revenge-party formed, 178; 
dying with smallpox, 185; star- 
vation among, 242; downfall be- 
gins, 266. 

Blackfeet chieftains tour East, 
309. 

Blackfoot Crossing, 268, 297, 299, 
301. 

Blais, Father, 318. 

Blanchet, Father, 61, 314. 

Blanchet, Rev. Father, 183, 449. 

Bloods, the, 59, 195, 264, 265, 302, 
330. 

Boer War, the, 397. 

Bornheim, 376. 

Bourgine, Father, 183. 

Bourgeau, M., botanist, 74. 

Bourassa, Father, 39, 46, 64. 

Bourget, Bishop, 8, 16, 156. 

Bow River, 107, 200, 262, 277. 

Bowell, Sir Mackenzie, 355, 358, 
359. 

Brazeau, the interpreter, 101, 172. 

Brest, 218. 

Bridge, first in Alberta built by 
Father Lacombe. 87; at Cal- 
gary, obtained by Father La- 
combe, 355; at Edmonton, also 



459 



460 



INDEX 



obtained by Father Lacombe, 
355. 

British North America Act, 338. 

British possessions, the, 171. 

British Cohimbia, 203. 

Brittany, 219, 398. 

Bruchesi, Archbishop, 438. 

Brussels, 398. 

Bruyere, de la, M., 413. 

Buffalo Lake, 69. 

Buffalo, hunt of, 24-33; disap- 
pearance of, 241; value of, to 
Indians, 23-24. 

Burns, P., 425, 444, 455. 

Butler, General Sir William, 191, 
457. 



Caer, Father, 89. 

Canadian Pacific Railway, ap- 
proaches West, 246; condition 
of early navvies of, 247-248; 
building of, over the prairies, 
271. 

Calgary, Fort, 262. 

Calgary, 263, 279, 284, 291, 297, 
332. 

Car of Israel, 333. 

Cariboo, 323. 

Carlton, Fort, 131-132. 

Caron, Sir Adolphe, 328. 

Cases, M. de, 318. 

Catholic Missionary Congress, first 
in New World, 446. 

Caughnawaga, 311. 

Champs de Mars, 311. 

Chasse Oalerie, legend of, 1-4. 

Chicago, 446. 

Chief Mountain, 170. 

Chilcoten, 323. 

Chipewyans, the, 376, 384. 

Chipewyan, Fort, 48, 384-386. 

Cholera in Montreal, 12. 

Christie, Chief Factor William, 
93; improves Fort Edmonton, 
98, 178. 

Claude, Father, 290. 

Clover, Tom, 43. 

Clovis, 2. 

Cold Lake, 265. 



Colonization work in west, 33 
232. 

Cologne, 398. 

Columbia River, 313. 

Commons, House of, 378, 3 

Confederation Act, 336. 

Conservative Government, defeat 
of, in 1896, 370. 

Cornellier, Father, 428. j 

Coureurs de bois, 3. I 

Cranbrook, 425. % 

Crees, 59, 60, 62; mission for, 61; 
encounter with pagan Crees, 97- 
98, 100, 105, 109, 138, 159; dying 
with smallpox, 185; whiskey 
trade demoralises, 194; starving, 
243 ; degenerating, 261. 

Cree-Assinaboines, 176. 

Cretin, Father, 17. 

Crosse, He a la, 62, 96, 332. 

Crowfoot, Chief, 119, 296, 301, 
306, 323. 

Crow's Nest Pass, 336. 

Crozier, Major, 295. 

Cumberland House, 40. 

Cypress Mountains, 279. 

D 

Dallas, Governor, visits Edmon- 
ton House, 92. 

Daly, Hon. T. Mayne, 328, 343, 
355. 

Datur-Omnibus, the, 391. 

Davin, Nicholas Flood, 378. 

Demers, Father, 61, 314. 

Denny, Captain, 300, 302. 

Deal's Lake, 75. 

Dewdney, Hon. Edgar, 274, 286, 
300, 328. 

Diamond Jubilee of Father La- 
combe, 448. 

Dictionary, Cree, 191, 213. 

Dontenwiil, Bishop, 390. 

Dorion, Sir Aim6, 226. 

Doucet, Father, 183, 264, 279, 282, 
290, 323, 449. 

Douglas, 323. 

Dover, 217. 

Drexel, Mother Katherine, 317. 

Dubuque, 17. 



INDEX 



461 



iDuck Lake, 295. 

[Duhamel dit Sans-Fa<;on, 7. 

Duniont, Gabriel, 292. 

Dumoulin, Father, 22, 319. 

Dunbow, 285. 

Dunvegan, Fort, 66, 181, 383. 

Durieu, Bishop, 340. 

Duvernay, Ludger, 261. 

E 

Ecumenical Council, 154. 

Edmonton, Fort, established, 47; 
description of, 46-48; arrival of 
Father Lacombe at, 44; Indian 
trading at, 59-61, 99-101 ; Christ- 
mas at Fort Edmonton, 124; 
threatened by Blackfeet, 1T8; a 
new Edmonton, 259, 333; rail- 
way connection, 348. 

Education Act, England, 369. 

Emard, Bishop, 345. 

Emperor Francis Joseph, 401-404, 
433. 

Empire, The Toronto, 336. 

Ermine-Skin, Chief, 187, 302, 304. 



Fabre, Edouard (Archbishop), 8, 

313, 336. 
Fabre, Monsignor, 127. 
Fafard, Father, 229. 
Falher, Rev. Father, 388, 389. 
Faraud, Bishop, 131, 181, 219. 
Fiftieth anniversary of ordination 

of Father Lacombe, 379. 
Fitzgerald, Inspector, R.N.W.M. P., 

379. 
Fillion, Father, 229. 
Foisy, Father, 290. 
Fore"ts, the, 393. 
Forget, Hon. Rudolphe, 418. 
Fort Benton, 168, 170, 194. 
Fort Calgary, 262. 
Fort Carlton, 131, 132. 
Fort Chipweyan, 48, 384, 386. 
Fort Dunvegan, 66, 181, 383. 
Fort Edmonton, 44, 46, 47, 59, 

101, 124, 178. 



Fort McMurray, 387. 

Fort Pitt, 63, 131, 259. 

Fort Saskatchewan, 388. 

Fort Snelling, 19. 

Frrt Vermilion, 384. 

Foster, Hon. G. E., 385. 

Fourmond, Father, 264. 

Franchere, 303. 

Frain, Father, 73, 245. 

Francis Joseph, Emperor, 401-404. 

433. 
France, 137, 193, 214, 244. 396. 

428. 
Franco-Prussian War, 193. 
Frankfort, 433. 
Franklin, Sir John, 386. 
Frank, slide of Mount, 425. 
Eraser River, 323. 
Eraser. Colin, 51. 
Free Press, Manitoba, 232. 
Freighting, first, by carts from 

Red River to Edmonton, 88; 

first brigade of H. B. C. carts 

to Edmonton, 137. 
Frog Lake, 295, 304. 



Gagnon, Abb^, 37. 

Gait, Sir Alex., 268, 285. 

Garry, Fort, 208. 

Gaste, Father, 163. 

Germany, 396. 

Gibbons, James, 128. 

Gleichen, 275, 301. 

Golowkowski, Premier, 399. 

Grahame, Steamship, 387. 

Grandin, Rev. Father, 439. 

Grandin, Vital, Bishop of St. Al- 
bert, arrives in West, 64; meets 
Father Lacombe, 131 ; enters St. 
Albert as Bishop, 163; sends 
Father Lacombe to East, 204; 
founder of Indian Schools, 204; 
warns Ottawa Government of 
rebellion impending, 294-295 ; 
appoints a coadjutor, 372; toast 
to Father Lacombe, 391-393; ill- 
ness and death, 412-417. 

Great Divide, 3. 

Great Slave Lake, 416. 



46^ 



INDEX 



Greek Catholic, 395. 

Greenway Administration, 337. 

Grey, Lord, 444. 

Grey Nuns, to Mackenzie, 137; to 
Lac Ste. Anne, 77; to St. Al- 
bert, 89; to Dunbow, 289. 

Groat, Malcolm, 100, 178. 

Grollier, Father, 40. 

Grouard, Bishop, 318, 379, 386. 

H 

Hamilton, 86. 

Hapsburg, House of, 403. 

Harriot, John, 44. 

Hardisty, Richard, 94; befriends 
Father Lacombe, 123. 

Harnois, Leon, 171, 260. 

Haultain, Hon. Mr., 339, 345. 

Haultain Administration, 339. 

Healeys, the, 170, 171. 

Hebert, Louis, 283. 

Hector, Sir James, 73, 74. 

Helena, Montana, 332. 

Hill, James, 231, 426. 

Hermitage, 326, 334, 341, 371, 372. 

Hermitage of St. Michel, 340. 

Hobbema, 348, 393. 

Hohenlohe, Count Hermann von, 
275. 

Hohenlohe, Cardinal von, 276. 

Hospital for Indians, 324. 

Horse-stealing, 277, 279. 

House-tent, 143; midnight mass 
in, 152. 

Hudson Bay Company, 40; boat- 
men of, 40-42; established at 
Fort Edmonton, 47; attitude to- 
ward missionaries, 56-57; atti- 
tude toward unfortunate Indi- 
ans, 58. 

Hunfeld, 398. 



Idaho, 105. 

Immigration, inflow of European, 
395. 

Indian Industrial School, estab- 
lishment of, 284, 289; need of 
improvement, 445. 



Indian treaty No. 8, commission 
for, 376-377; making of, 376-388. 
Ireland, Archbishop, 407, 426. 
Iroquois, 64, 311. 
Irvine, Major, N.W.M.P., 203. 
Isbister, James, 292. 
Italy, 396. 



Jackson, Henry, 293. 
Jasper House, 66. 
Jaxon, Honor^, 293. 
Jerusalem, 431. 
Jesuits, Montana, 171. 
Jesuit Estates Act, 337. 
Journal, Le, 362. 

K 

Kaiser, 170. 

Kamloops, 346. 

Kane, Paul, 126. 

Kenooshayo, 381. 

Kenrick, Archbishop, 173. 

Kentucky, 103. 

Kicking Horse Pass, 270, 313. 

Kipp, Joe, 170, 328. 

Kiyiwin, Abraham, 109. 

Klondyke, movement to, 376. 

Kootenay, 105, 347. 



Lacombe, Father— nativity, 5; par- 
entage, 5-6; at college, 8; called 
to Montreal, 8; decides to be a 
^missionary, 10; ordination, 11; 
departs for West, 16; chaplain 
to Metis Hunt, 24; returns to 
Montreal, 37; again to Western 
missions, 38; consents to go to 
Fort Edmonton, 40; first jour- 
ney to Peace River, 64; enters 
Oblate Order, 66; first call to 
Blackfeet, 68; becomes mission- 
ary Free-lance of plains, 106; 
founds St. Paul de Cris, 111; 
witnesses Cree-Blackfeet battle, 
116; starves on the winter trail, 
142; coup d'etat in Blackfoot 



INDEX 



1163 



camp, 157; prevents Blackfoot 
attack, 161; voyage to St. Louis 
and Montreal, 169; succors the 
wounded Blackfeet, 176; devo- 
tion during smallpox epidemic, 
182-186; receives Sweet-Grass as 
Christian, 190; writes Cree dic- 
tionary and sermons, 191; in- 
vents picture-Catechism, 201 ; 
given a mission concerning 
schools, 204; sails for France, 
214; takes up colonization work, 
228; parochial work in Winni- 
peg, 228; pleads Indian cause at 
Ottawa, 244; voyage to Europe, 
delegate to General Chapter, 
244; becomes chaplain of first 
trans-continental, 247; returns 
to Far West missions, 259; aids 
in keeping peace during Rebel- 
lion, 296-305; begs in East for 
missions, 315; secures first In- 
dian hospital, 330; engages in 
School Question, 336-340; con- 
ducts School-Question campaign 
for Archbishop Tache, 344, 353, 
358, 370; originates plan of 
Metis colony, 350; illness, 373; 
adviser to Indian Treaty Com- 
mission, 376-388; attempts his 
Memoirs, 393; opens last cam- 
paign of begging, 408; retires 
to Hermitage, 423; voyage to 
Palestine, 428-434; relinquishes 
enterprise of Metis colony. 442; 
plans a Home for aged and 
orphans, 443. 
acombe, Albert, Sr., 5. 
acombe, Gaspard, 103, 128, 450. 
acombe, Joseph, 6. 
acombe, Mdme. Agathe, 6, 174, 
269. 

acombe, Christine, 176, 260. 
acombe Home, its founder begins 
to plan, 443; building of, 454; 
opening of, 455. 
,ac la Biche, 49, 62; transporta- 
tion by, 168, 174, 181. 
,ac Ste. Anne, established, 61; 
described by Lord Southesk, 75, 
76. 



Lac Rouge, 20. 

Ladder, (Echelle), of Father La- 
combe, 202. 

Lafleche, Bishop, 318. 

Laird, Hon. David, 379, 380, 382. 

Langdon, 297. 

Langevin, Archbishop, 351, 390, 
428. 

Langevin, Sir Hector, 225, 226, 
295, 413. 

Larivi{;re, Hon. A. C, 351, 353. 

L'Assomption College, 8. 

L'Assomption, 174, 269, 342. 

Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 359; corre- 
sponds with Father Lacombe on 
school-question, 360-361, 363, 369, 
448. 

Lebret, Rev. Louis, 419, 420. 

Leduc, Father, arrives in West, 
137, 163, 183, 318, 439, 449. 

Ledochowski, Cardinal, 398. 

Lefloch, Father, 115. 

Legoff, Rev. Father, 163, 450. 

Legal, Bishop, 267; meets Father 
Lacombe, 305, 318, 323, 328; co- 
adjutor bishop of St. Albert, 
372; aids Father Lacombe, 411, 
450. 

Leopoli, 400. 

Lesser Slave Lake, 66, 181, 379, 

Lestanc, Rev. Father, 439, 450. 

LetaiUe, M., 214, 245. 

Lethbridge, 318. 

L'Heureux, Jean, 243, 286, 310. 

Liege, 433. 

Lilloet, 323. 

Little Pine, 100. 

Little Slave River, 66. 

Livingstone, Sam, 128-129. 

Loisy, Abbe, 430. 

London, 215, 272. 

Longue Point Asylum, 228. 

Lome, Marquis of, 255. 

Lorraine, Bishop, 318. 

Loras, Bishop, 17, 407. 

Louisville, 261. 

Lowell, 230. 

Luxembourg, 404. 

Luxton, W. F., 332, 334. 



464 



INDEX 



M 

Macdonald, Donald, 180. 

Macdonald, Joseph, 100. 

MacDonnell, Captain, 320. 

Macdonald, Sir John, conference 
with Tach^, 225-236; on Indian 
Schools, 386; quotes Father La- 
combe, 296, 298, 339. 

MacKenna, J. A. J., 379. 

Mackenzie, Sir Alex., 386. 

Mackenzie, Murdo, 124-125. 

Mackenzie District, 137. 

Mackintosh, Governor, 345. 

Macleod, Fort, 264, 266. 

Macleod, 320, 335. 

Macleod, Col., 268, 274. 

MacLaine, Flatboat, 99. 

MacPherson, Sir David, 281-283. 

McCarthy (Jimmy-from-Cork), 
128. 

McCarthy, Dalton, 337. 

McDougall, Rev. George, 97, 182. 

McLoughlin, Dr. John, 129. 

McTavish, Governor, 295. 

Maisonneuve, le, 14. 

Manitoba, 88, 229. 

Manitoba School Question, origin 
of, 337; early struggle in, 338, 
340; Hierarchy's united action, 
344-345; progress of, 353-354; 
closing agitation of, 358, 370; 
Memorial on, 344-345; Remedial 
Order, 354; Remedial Bill, 368; 
overthrows Government, 370. 

Manning, Archbishop, 216. 

Marchand, Father, 295. 

Mardi Gras, 1. 

Marseilles, 438. 

Marguerite, the Sarcee captive, 
157. 

Massachusetts, 229-230. 

Matheson, Jack, 174. 

Medicine Hat, 327, 436. 

Melanges Religieux, 12, 16. 

Mercier, Canon, 10, 12. 

Metis, 20; buflfalo hunts of, 24-33; 
Golden Age of, 23, 24, 33; Metis 
of Fort Pitt and Ste. Anne, 63; 
groups of Metis take to farm- 
ing, 80-84. 



Metis Colony, origin of, 350, 353j 
grant of land to, 356; organi- 
zation of, 373; financial difficul- 
ties, 420; fire destroys institu- 
tion, 434. 

Metternich, Princess, 401. 

Metz, 218. 

Mill, grist, built by Father La- 
combe, 90. 

Milton, Lord, visits St. Albert, 93. 

Minto, Lady, 374. 

Minsrve, La, 261. 

Missouri, 168, 171. 

Monias, 25. 

Montana, 105, 328, 347. 

Montreal, 14, 37, 103, 202, 211. 

Moostoos, Chief, 381. 

Morin, Father, 357. 

Mormon settlers, 328. 

Morrison, Angus, 235; execution 
of, 237. 

Moulin, Rev. Father, 163. 

Mountstephen, Lord, 221, 223, 274, 
404. 

Mountains of Setting Sun, 3. 

Mounted Police, established, 239, 
263; factors in western civiliza- 
tion, 270, 355. 

Munroe, William (Piskan), 268. 

Munich, 398. 

N 

Na Batoche, 160. 

Nancy, 218-219. 

Natous, Chief, 116, 121, 243, 

Nelson, 426. 

Neuf-Chateau, 404. 

New Orleans, 168. 

New Westminster, 407, 436. 

Nicolet, 335. 

Non-Conformists, 340, 369. 

Norway House, 46, 103, 126. 

Nose Hill, 142. 

O 

Oberammergau, Canadian, 333. 

Oblates, a new order, 36, 38; Fa- 
ther Lacombe enters Order, 66, 
193, 194; Oblates' uniform, 329; 



INDEX 



465 



factor in civilization of West, 
270. 

Iblates, Annals of, 168. 

Ihio, 103. 

ijibway ancestor of Father La- 
combe, 7. 

Hd Bow Fort, 179. 

intario, 103. 

irafino, 105. 

irclia. Cardinal, 398. 

tregon, 139, 373. 

itaskawan, 348. 

ittawa, 310. 

ttawa, Archbishop of, 332. 

luimet, Hon. Mr., 335. 



alliser Expedition, 73. 

apaskis, 187. 

apineau, 26. 

ar^, 168. 

ar^. Canon, 8. 

aris, 317, 320, 245, 398. 

aris Exposition, 397. 

arliament Buildings, 1, 2. 

assion Play by Indians, 333. 

atrie, La, 435. 

awtucket, 317. 

ays d'en Haut, 1, 6, 16, 35. 

eace River, 107, 376. 

eace River Crossing, 383. 

eace River Trail, 383. 

embina, 9, 17; foundation of, 22; 

arrival of Father Lacombe at, 

embroke, 332. 

emmican, making of, 32. 

hiladelphia, 315, 318. 

icture-catechism, 201, 213-214. 

iegans, the, 59, 195, 265, 328, 393. 

ike's Peak, 105. 

ig's Eye, 18. 

ile-o'-Bones, 259. 

incher Creek, 325, 436. 

ine River Pass, 203, 275. 

itt. Fort, the Metis of, 63, 131, 

259. 

lattsburg, 228. 

lenary Council, 448. 

oint Douglas, 239. 



Politics, attitude of Father La- 
combe on, 365-367, 447-448. 

Ponoka, 348. 

Pope Pius X, 432. 

Pope Pius IX, 154, 155, 193. 

Portage la Loclie, 47. 

Portland, 217. 

Port Arthur, 254. 

Poulin, Father, 215, 218. 

Pound-Maker, Chief, 295, 298, 305, 
308. 

Powers, the, 120. 

Presse. La, 359, 362, 363-364. 

Prince Albert, 393, 394, 296, 332. 

Prince, Monseigneur, 8. 

Princess Beatrice, 375. 

Princess Louise, 243. 

Propagation of the Faith, 193. 

Pritchard, John, 175. 

Privy Council, 336-339. 

Providence, 317. 

Provinces erected from Northwest 
Territories, 435. 

Provincial Rights, 339. 

Pryzenyls, 400. 

Q 

Qu'Appelle, 259, 285, 286, 308. 
Quebec, 212. 
Quebec Citadel, 311. 
Quebec Tercentenary, 444. 
Queen Victoria, 375. 
Quinn, Agent, 295. 

R 

Rae, Captain, 171. 

Rae, Doctor, visits Father La- 
combe, 103. 

RampoUa, Cardinal, 398. 

Readv-made farms planned in 
1883, 277. 

Rat Portage, 207, 254, 275. 

Ravoux, Father, 18, 407. 

Red Crow, 309. 

Red Deer Crossing, 2T8-279. 

Red River Cart, 26, 87. 

Red River, great flood of, 30, 38, 
88, 103, 154, 308. 

Reed, Havter, 340. 



4^66 



INDEX 



Regina, 332. 

Remas, Father, 62, 64, 72, 77, 290, 
349. 

Remedial Ordinance, 354. 

Rideau Hall, 309. 

Riel rebellion of 1885, impending, 
391; claims of Metis, 291. 

Riel, Louis, 224; political aspira- 
tions, 226; hiding in Quebec, 
227; mental unbalance, 227; re- 
turns from Montana, 293; takes 
leadership of Metis, 295; sur- 
rendered, 305. 

Rivifere du Loup, 285. 

Rimouski, 324. 

Rocky Mountain House, 104, 111, 
122, 174, 176, 191, 192. 

Rome, 244, 432. 

Ross, James, 329, 375. 

Routhier, Judge, 318. 

Rowand, Chief Factor, character 
of, 40; family of, 44; story of, 
53-55; defied by Father La- 
combe, 56; Indian name, 170. 

Rowand's Folly, 47. 

Royal, Ex-Governor, 409. 

Royer, Rev. Father, 410. 

Rupert's Land, 162. 

Ruthenian Settlers, 395; Father 
Lacombe interests Austrian Gov- 
ernment and Rome in, 399, 404, 
433; missionaries arrive in Can- 
ada for, 417. 

Ryan, Thomas, 426. 



Sarcee brave, shot at Edmonton 

House, 100. 
Sarcee captive, rescued by Father 

Lacombe, 139. 
Saskatchewan River, 41, 55, 99; 

gold found on, 103; Forks, 107; 

rafting on. 111; privations of 

missionaries in valley of, 186, 

194, 203. 
SatoUi, Cardinal, 398. 
Sault Ste. Marie, 7. 
Saulteaux, the, 10; plunder brigade 

of Father Lacombe, 20, 22. 
Schillingfuerst, 276. 



Schultz, Sir John, 299. 

School, first, in Alberta, 88. 

Scollen, Father, 88, 191, 242, 303. 

Script for northern Metis, 381- 
382. 

Sechelt, 323. 

Seghers, Archbishop, murder of, 
314. 

Selkirk Mountains, 313. 

Selkirk, Lord, asks Quebec for 
priests, 22, 39, 175. 

Shaughnessy, Sir Thomas, 436. 

Shah of Persia, 220. 

Silver Bow, 171. 

Sifton, Hon. Clifford, 377, 378. 

Simpson, Thomas, 386. 

Sinclair, "Credo," 116. 

Sixty-fifth Regiment, in Riel Re- 
be"llion, 305. 

Sixtieth anniversary of ordinatior 
of Father Lacombe, 448-451. 

Slavs, 395-396. 

Slide-Out (whiskey trading-post), 
266. 

Smallpox epidemic, 182-186. 

Smeulders, Monsignor, 375. 

Smith, Donald, 231, 275. 

Smet, Pfere de, 51, 67, 173. 

Snelling, Fort, 19. 

Soullier, Very Rev. Father, 346. 

Southesk, Lord, visits Father La- 
combe at Ste. Anne, 75; writes 
of Father Lacombe, 75-76. 

Stand-Off, Fort, 266. 

Stanislaus, 400. 

Stanley, Lord, visits Alberta, 320 

Stephen, George, 272, 274. 

Stickeen, 323. 

Strathcona, Lord, 275, 451, 454. 

Stephen, George, 272, 274. 

Strasburg, 318. 

Sturgeon River, 81, 92. 

Stuart's Lake, 323. 

St. Albert, establishment of, 82- 
85; episcopal see erected, 162; 
frontier cathedral at, 163; earlj 
life in, 164; erected a separate 
diocese, 204; modernized, 260. 

St. Boniface, 22, 38, 40, 87, 89 
137, 208, 344. 

St. Eugene, 426. 



INDEX 



467 



;t. Hyadnthe, 11, 335. 

It. Louis, 171. 

it. Mary's, 333. 

It Paul, mission of Abbe Galtier, 

18, 104, ^31, 234, 407, 426, 452. 
it. Paul de Metis, 356. 
it Sulpice, 4, 5. 
iuperlor. Lake, 352. 
;wan Hills, 387. 
[weet-Grass, Chief, 130, 151, 153, 

187; shadow on, 188, 194. 

'cannis, 323. 



•ach*, Alexandre (Archbishop of 
St. Boniface)— meets Father La- 
combe, 37; first visit to Edmon- 
ton, 62; selects site of St. Al- 
bert, 82; receives the pallium, 
208;' confers with Government 
on Amnesty, 224; sends Father 
Lacombe to Europe, 244; tours 
the West, 290; journeys to the 
Pacific, 313; again tours the 
West, 332; Memorial on School 
Question, 344-345; death of, 
346. 

["arte, Hon. Israel, 397. 

Caschereau, Cardinal, 212. 

rherien, Father, 351, 373, 408. 

fhibault, Father, 38, 49, 62, 64, 

, 173. 

Thompson, Sir John, 307, 328, 346. 

rhree Bulls, 309, 322. 

.rhree Ponds, 115; battle of, 116- 
122. 

rhunder Bay, 255. 

rissier. Father, 181, 439, 449. 

Toronto, 355. 

frail of Death, 397. 

fupper, Sir Charles, 247, 355, 359. 

Turtle Mountain, 27. 
Two Medicine River, 328. 

U 

Jniversity of Alberta, 88. 
Jniversity of Ottawa. 332. 
■Jniversity of St. Louis, 172, 173. 
University of Toronto, 293. 



Valleyfield, Bishop of, 345. 

Vancouver, 313. 

Vandenburghe, Rev. Father, in- 
spects Oblate missions, 105. 

Van Home, Sir William, 272, 275, 
321, 342, 352. 

Van Tighen, Father, 316. 

Varennes, Bishop of, 219. 

Vegrevilie, Rev. Father, 163, 168. 

Verandrye, de la Varennes, 270. 

Veuillot,' Louis, 164, 218. 

Viarmes, 396. 

Viau, Abb^ de, 6, 10, 11. 

Vichy, 218, 221. 

Victoria, B. C, 314. 

Victoria, 128, 182. 

Vienna, 399, 433. 

Virginia, 103. 

Voi/affeurs. 1, 3, 16, 40; hardships 
of, 41, 127. 

W 

Wales, Prince of, 397. 
Wetaskiwin, 348. 
AMiiskey Fort, 266. 
White-Eagle, sorcerer, 97. 
White Fathers, The, 431. 
Whoop-up, Fort, 266. 
Whyte, William, 355. 
Wiicaskokiseyin, 110, 130. 
Wilkie, John, President of Metis 

Hunt, 25, 33. 
Winnipeg, 208. 
Witigo, murder of, 389. 
Witness, Montreal, 364, 365. 
Wolverine Point, 191. 
Woonsocket, 317. 



York-boats, 40. 
York Factory, 47. 
Young, Harrison, 178. 
Yukon, 314. 



Zeptickyi, Archbishop, 400, 455. 
Zichy. Countess. 401. 
Zoldach, Rev. Father, 417. 
Zouaves, 219. 



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